On the Royle Range

Book 3: Forever Texas Novel

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

JOHNSTONE COUNTRY. A TEXAN’S DREAM. OR A TEXAN’S NIGHTMARE

The bestselling masters of the Great American Western deliver a thrilling new chapter in the Forever Texas saga—as the ranch-building Royles prepare for the deadliest conflict in U.S. history . . .

Civil War is brewing. Everything is about to change. Based on true events.

When Regis Royle dreams, he dreams big. And since everything’s bigger in Texas, his dream is to make the Royle Ranch the biggest cattle supplier in the country. Problem is, the country is splitting apart, people are taking sides, and everyone’s gearing up for a full-blown War Between the States. Regis’s kid brother, Shepley, has enlisted in the Army. His trusted foreman “Bone” McGraw has left to rejoin the Texas Rangers. And the rail lines have been rerouted for the war effort. Which means Regis has to transport his cows the hard way: a cattle drive . . .

This will be one hellish journey he’ll never forget. If he survives.

With only a skeleton crew of ranch hands, Regis takes the lead to drive the cattle northward—facing more perils than he ever imagined. He and his men are attacked by a brutal, thieving band of Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, and half-breeds. They’re plagued by violent storms, relentless heat, stampeding herds, and poisonous snakes. When Regis gets separated from his men, he fears he’s reached the end of the line. But giving up is not an option.  

A Texan knows he has to keep fighting—even in America’s darkest hour—to keep the dream alive . . .

Release date: August 20, 2024

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Conversation around the campfire at Royle Ranch was light, and everyone felt buoyed by bowls full of warm stew. The day’s work had been long and successful, which put Jarvis “Bone” McGraw, erstwhile Texas Ranger and current overseer of the men and ranch manager, in a good mood.

Bone had been wearing himself thin with full days of work at the Royle Ranch. Then he’d ride on home to his own smaller ranch a couple of days a week some miles north of the Royle Range.

When Regis Royle himself was present at the ranch, his men were wary and not a little skittish. He had a tendency to ramrod everything. The man would pop up in the most unlikely of spots, and it was unnerving.

Just when you think you earned a quick moment to lean on a shovel and wipe the sweat from your brow, there’d be Regis Royle. He’d not say a thing, but cast his tall, wide-shouldered shadow on whatever task you were up to, be it sinking fence posts or digging out a perimeter to lay stone for a new building’s foundation.

It seemed they were forever building some structure or another. They certainly were needed, especially the small houses for workers, because the Royle Ranch was a growing place.

It also seemed that every time someone in a boss position about the place—usually Regis or Bone, but sometimes Cormac, Regis’s partner in the steamship freighting business—opened up their mouths to speak, the ranch hands knew what they were going to say.

And it usually was something about Regis having bought more land. And that was a never-ending source of conversational fodder for the boys come meal time.

“Honestly,” one or another hand would say. “Is there any more land for sale in Texas?”

That brought a breezy laugh from the cluster of haggard men. They were knackered, having spent the day working under Bone’s watchful eye.

Even though Bone could be a hard man to please, he would dole out a nod or grunt of approval to the men when they tried at whatever task it happened to be, from fence building to carpentering to brush popping for wayward cattle. A man didn’t always have to complete a task successfully to get one of those hard-earned but powerful grunts or nods from the man.

He was willing to see you fail . . . once, though he rarely tolerated a second time. He’d call a fellow off to one side for a low-volume conversation. Even the most hardened cowboy could be dressed down by Bone McGraw and come away red-faced but grateful for the talk, and feeling bad about having let down the big, mustachioed ranger.

He’d also work right by your side to show you a better way to do a thing. Could be smithery, fixing a snapped shovel or banging out another batch of nails. Or it could be riding down broncs or repairing and maintaining tack, it didn’t matter, it seemed Bone had done it all.

And if you happened to know a thing that he did not know, he was not shy about asking you to repeat your instructions so that he might learn a new task by your side.

Yes, Bone McGraw was a man the rest of the growing number of men at the Royle Ranch agreed was hard as stone, but a good fellow to work for.

Their feelings did not run in quite the same direction when it came to ranch owner and top boss, Regis Royle.

Oh, he, too, was a solid man, but he was not afraid to bellow a man down right in front of everyone else, and then he’d storm off when he’d reached the end of his tether, leaving an embarrassed hand and a throng of equally embarrassed nearby men. And that seemed to be happening a whole lot more these days.

There were a number of men, the old-timers, who had been around several years before when Regis first began carving a ranch out of this vast, sometimes beautiful, sometimes brutal country of far southeastern Texas.

And those old-timers, though some of them weren’t yet thirty, and a few of them even younger than that, were always quick to point out to the newcomers that the ranch they hired on to today was a whole lot finer than it had been in the early days.

“See that reservoir there?” a youthful old-timer would say, sipping a cup of coffee.

“Yes, sir,” the newcomer would reply.

“Hand-dug.”

“All of it? You mean it wasn’t here?”

That common reaction was always met with headshakes and sneers of pity by the old-timers. And then one of the bosses would show up, and the day’s work would commence. Or resume.

Frequently they began their long days well before sunup. Before breakfast, there was plenty to do—tending the stock, rounding up chicken and goose and duck eggs, and in the process seeing what damage the night’s coyote raids had inflicted on the poultry.

If there were carcasses of birds, and they weren’t too badly mangled, they would be fetched back to Percy Grimlaw, the cook, and his assistant of the week. (They never lasted long before being rotated out to other duty. Any duty, if they had a say in the matter. Percy could be touchy, and exacting, and cantankerous.)

If the poultry carcasses were too far gone, the pigs got the meat. Same thing with any of the seemingly endless supply of rattlers the men shot. Pigs, they found, would eat just about anything.

“How is it a pig can eat such a thing as a snake and piles of food scraps and roll around in dust and shade all day and still end up tasting so dang good?”

It was a question Burton Shanks, the blacksmith, always asked with a chuckle as he fed the pigs. It was a chore he enjoyed, and he always spent time scratching the snouts and ears of the grateful critters.

“Burton, you talk to them as if they can understand you,” Chubby John “Tut” Tuttle, another hand from the ranch’s early days, said, shaking his head as if he’d just witnessed something mighty strange.

“Who’s to say they can’t?” Burton would always say. “I, for one, believe all God’s creatures understand one another in some way we dumb humans can’t even understand yet.”

Tut shrugged and sipped his coffee while he watched Burton dump a stewpot of peelings and bone scraps into the hewn log trough. “Okay, then, by that logic, next you’ll tell me that trees and grass and flowers and such are chatty with each other, too.”

Burton leaned his head to the side. “Who’s to say . . .”

“I know, I know. Who’s to say they aren’t.” Again, Tut shook his head and turned to head back to the kitchens, eager for a second cup of coffee, strong and black and hot, just the way his best friend, Percy, made it and just the way the men had better well like it. “All I know is you talk that talk too loud, and the men are liable to haul you off to some place they keep the crazies.”

Burton smiled and gave a pig one last scratch on the snout, then fell in line behind Tut. “Who’s to say we aren’t already there?”

Tut laughed. “Burton, you beat all, I swear.”

As one of the seasoned hands, Tut had earned the right to get to work a pinch later, which gave him time to welcome the new day with his young wife, ranch schoolmarm, formerly known as Miss Belinda Orton. On this morning, Tut was filling in on early shift duties because of the lack of new hires of late, a trend becoming more of a worry as talk of war in various parts of the country at large began fomenting.

Tut and Percy had, in fact, been among the first men hired on by Regis Royle back when there was nothing but snakes and grass on the spot now occupied by a range of impressive shacks, shanties, and proper sheds, stables, and homes that helped make up what Regis called the “ranch proper.”

Tut and Burton made it back to the grub house as other men stumbled and grumbled and yawned and scratched on in. One of the things that made the single ranch hands’ lives easier these days was the fact that the families they’d helped relocate to this side of the border were no longer crowding around waiting for their own feed.

Those days had been a pain, because everyone had to eat in shifts at each meal and you had to get yourself in line early to get a place at the table.

Most of the families were Mexican villagers that Regis brought over the border to live here and work the ranch—laboring men, as well as their wives, children, old folks, burros, chickens, goats, the works. Now that they mostly all had houses with their own outdoor ovens that they shared, they were able to feed themselves and take the pressure off of Percy and his various helpers at the ranch grub shack.

And the men no longer had to eat in shifts. That didn’t mean there wasn’t jostling in line to get at the table.

That morning, as with all mornings, Percy was surly and in a dark mood. But as with all other mornings, the men ignored his steaming ways, because for all that, Percival Grimlaw was one mighty fine cook. And for such a young man, too.

Yes, sir, the ranch had taken shape in these last few years, from a sea of grass and rock and scrub and mesquite teeming with snakes and birds and coyotes. It was also home to herds of bawling, brawling, brush-rat cattle with horns aching to hook a man’s horse wide open. They were cattle that stood their ground, snorting and bellowing and raking earth with chipped, stomping hooves.

And there were herds of mad-eye, snorting wild horses that took a whole lot of catching and even more working and coaxing before they broke. And some of them didn’t, at least not before they broke many a cowhand’s bones.

The place that stood today made for an impressive change in the landscape. It boasted a whole lot of man-built structures and refinements, including water containments and canals, gardens, crops, fences, corrals and barns, adobe and log homes for the Mexican villagers, a church and schoolhouse, again for the villagers, as well as a smithy and wheelwright shop, and a cook shack with a dog run for cooking outdoors, which Percy got up to most of the time, save for the windiest days of the year, and the cold ones, too.

But it was the herds of cattle that Regis was most concerned with—and most counted on. The aggressive breeding efforts that he and Bone had set in place had begun to pay off. They’d mated the rangy, small, tough-as-nails longhorns with thicker, slower, but fatter beef animals from bulls Regis had bought for fees that some of the men swore equaled ten times what they made in a meager wage in a whole year’s time.

Removed from the rest of the ranch proper’s constant hubbub, there was also a genuine house in a slow but constant state of expansion. It was built with genuine lumber, ferried in by wagon, and it was Regis Royle’s home, and had been shared by his troublesome younger brother, Shepley, before he left for the second time to join the US Army.

Everybody liked Shep, as he was all the things his older brother, Regis, was not. Namely, the younger Royle brother was a smiler who never had a cross word for the men. He’d also always been willing to tuck in and help when they really needed the help.

Trouble was, he was just as prone to loping off in the middle of the day and finding a shady spot to nap away a few hours where a breeze would keep him snoring and smiling. Until his brother found him, anyway.

Most of the men just shook their heads and chuckled at the young man’s exploits. They all wished they could get away with such actions, but they’d be out of a job the first time they tried.

But Shep, as the baby brother of the ranch owner—and rumor had it, part owner himself—was able to get away with a whole lot most men would never dream of doing. It did not mean he was immune from the brutal tongue lashings of Regis.

Indeed, he got chewed out so regularly by his older brother that the men bet each other chore duties as to how long Shepley Royle would take his brother’s bellowing rages before he up and left for good. Not that anyone thought he really would.

Then the kid did just that. He’d pulled up stakes on his eighteenth birthday. But the kid, being a fool, and as green as a spring shoot, never made his escape past Corpus Christi, where he was knifed nearly to death in an alley behind the bar he was getting legless in.

Before he got intimate with that blade, however, but after he’d downed a whole lot of whiskey, he’d signed on with the US Army.

It had taken Regis, so they were told, a whole lot of fancy talking, and some folks even said a big ol’ wad of cash, to keep the kid’s enlistment in the army from going ahead.

Instead, and barely into Shep’s convalescence, Regis had hauled the kid back to the ranch, and kept him all but locked up in his old room until Regis decided Shep was well enough to resume his ranch duties.

But Burton had overheard them arguing one evening, and he’d learned that Shepley Royle had other plans, and they didn’t include living on the Royle Ranch. “It’s always been your dream, Regis, not my dream. Yours.”

And that’s when they all knew that as soon as he’d healed up, Regis was going to make life a big ol’ pain once more for his kid brother.

But Shep beat him to the punch by leaving one day while Regis was off on one of his forays for land, cattle, supplies, or to tend to matters at the shipping office he shared with his shipping business partner, Cormac Delany.

The oddest thing, all the men agreed, was that Regis did not chase after him this time. Instead, he let him go. But at the same time, it had seemed that something about the man had changed, and that showed itself about the ranch, too.

There were rumblings and rumors that Regis, whose coin pouch had always seemed bottomless, was strapped for cash. Some men said they’d heard in Brownsville that the shipping business was all but dead, and all because of Regis’s thirst for land.

Cormac’s visits to the ranch had been infrequent in the past, but nowadays they had become downright nonexistent. It was rumored he was too busy in town courting banks and drumming up shipping business for their fleet of steamers.

And Regis Royle himself, never what you’d call a full-bore, gregarious, chatty fellow, had grown more sullen and surly, barking at men for slim, and sometimes no, reasons at all. And then Regis had met a woman, and his attitude had begun to shift, barely, to be sure, but enough that the men caught glimpses of light shafting in through his dark moods and these dark times for the ranch.

And the more seasoned of the Royle Ranch hands knew who this mysterious woman was. And their wry grins and sly headshakes showed their approval at this choice of a paramour for Regis Royle.

For she was none other than the true and proper heir—or rather heiress—to the Valdez land grant, the land on which much of the heart of the Royle Ranch sat.

It made sense, they explained to the newcomers, on purely practical grounds. But what sort of woman wouldn’t see through such a wooing? Sure, Regis Royle was a big, handsome, wide-shouldered, square-chinned fellow, but still ...

Every time Shepley Royle, well into his eighteenth year, felt like throwing up his hands and giving in to his urges to quit, he thought of his brother, Regis, and the smug look on the man’s face.

It was a look Shep had long wanted to pummel with a flurry of hard fists. He’d set his jaw just thinking about it, feeling his molars beginning to powder and his jaw muscles twitching and jouncing and bulging.

“Boy, what ails you?”

Shep jerked out of his reverie and spun to look in the eye of the man who’d spoken to him. It was his commanding officer, Sergeant Cowley. Despite what the various recruits said, sniggering in secret with the lamps blown out for the night after a long ol’ day of training, there was nothing ‘cowlike’ about Cowley. If anything, the man was all bull.

“Sorry, sir!”

“You best be, Royle.” The man leaned forward and nearly touched his nose tip to Shep’s. In a low voice, he said, “And don’t you think because your name sounds like something the Queen of England wears that you’re going to get special treatment in this here army, you understand?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Now answer my question, Royle.” He’d resumed his normal near-shout, still only a hand’s distance from Shep’s face. It was loud enough that the five other men Shep had been working with most definitely heard.

And as he cast a quick glance their way, he saw the relief and telltale reddening on their faces. He’d been caught daydreaming again when he should have been digging the hole he’d been assigned to dig. They were digging latrine hole pits to be filled with dung, nothing more.

This, he thought, was what he’d left the ranch, Regis’s cursed ranch, for so long ago. He’d left twice, in fact, and had been nearly done in by that vicious cat from Hades, Tomasina Valdez.

And now here he was, thinking a life in the army would . . . would what, Shep? Would prove he was a man. To whom? To Regis? Regis didn’t care. No, Shepley, my boy, he told himself, you went and did it again. You played the fool without thinking through the consequences of your actions, as Regis had reminded him to do over and over these last few years.

“I’m waiting, Private Royle!”

Shep’s eyes grew as wide as they’d ever been. Oh no, he did it again! He felt himself shaking, and he said, “I . . . it’s my brother, sir.”

“And what about your brother, Royle?”

“I . . .” What about Regis, Shep? he asked himself, licking his lips. Go ahead and tell the man that you didn’t like how he was treating you. How he wanted to give you part of the biggest ranch the world had ever seen, at least according to Regis. And he had to hand it to his brother, the Royle Ranch, and Royle Range, was huge, and if Regis had anything to say about it, it was only getting bigger. “He’s dead, sir.”

He had really had no intention of saying that, but there it was, he thought, like half the things he’d said and done in his life, but it had happened anyways. Almost as if Shep could not control himself or his thoughts or actions or words. He was a mess, as Regis had said more than once.

If, deep down, Shep had thought he might receive some amount of sympathy from Cowley, he was sorely mistaken.

“So what, Royle? My sainted mama’s dead, my long-suffering pa is dead, my two sisters are dead. I’m the only one left of my family. You see me tearing up and looking past that hill thinking of good times and tea parties? No!”

And then, as that last word drove into Shep’s face like a hard slap, Cowley walked into him hard and fast. Cowley was built like an oak barrel filled with lead and rage, and his arms and legs were as close as human flesh and bone could get to steel.

He rammed that brutal pointer finger into Shep’s chest and backed him up as he bulled forward. Shep stepped backward, had no choice, and his second step back kept going.

Cowley stopped, but Shep didn’t. He shrieked like a small child. Somehow his shovel fetched up behind his right boot. He tripped over it and fell backward, arms flailing.

He ended up on his back, his head slamming into the craggy rough hold he’d dug, his backside and legs collapsing him into a sprawl at the bottom. His long-handled shovel dropped down on him, the ash shaft smacking him atop his pate.

Shep looked up, dazed, into the sun, squinting, and Cowley shifted to his left, blocking out the sun. The two men stared at each other again, Cowley shaking his head slowly, Shep shaking his, too, but only to dispel the buzzing and ringing he felt there.

“Next time you daydream on army time, Royle, you will spend a whole lot longer than a few minutes in a hole. You’ll be in the hole, you got me, boy? And I’ll make sure it’s for at least thirty days. At the end of that, you’ll have to start your training all over again, you hear me?” He leaned down, not quite kneeling, and said, “I’ll see to it personally.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What?”

Shep scrambled to an upright position, still down in the hole, and saluted a quick, smart gesture as he’d been taught, over and over again. He couldn’t seem to do much right in the US Army, but he could, by gum, offer up a snappy salute.

“Yes, sir!”

Cowley straightened, his eyes narrowing as he looked down at Shep and shaking his head as if he smelled something vile dangling off the heel of his boot. “For a fella so close to finishing his training, you sure act like a fool. This is your last chance, Royle.”

“Yes, sir!” Another salute.

“Overdo that and you’ll be in the hole, too.” Cowley walked away, down the line of holes being dug with renewed fervor by Shepley’s fellow privates.

As he scrambled up out of the hole, Shep kept his gaze on the task at hand. He knew if he looked up, he’d see one of the others smirking at him, which he knew they all wanted to do, he just knew it. He also knew he was liable to bolt for them and give each and every one of them what-for. And that would sure as anything land him in the hole.

His face was hot, blazing red, as were his ears. It took a whole lot to embarrass him, and yet he’d spent a good amount of his life putting himself in embarrassing situations, and he was sick of it.

The more he dug, the more he thought, and the more he thought, the worse it all became. He recognized he was putting himself right back in that situation he didn’t want to be in, the one where he was daydreaming, and that would bring Cowley running. The man was looking for the chance to clip him off at the knees.

He sucked in a breath through his tight-set teeth and glanced up as he worked the shovel deep into the side of his hole. This was going to be the best darn latrine hole anyone in the history of the US Army had ever dug.

Cowley was gone, nowhere in sight, but Shep knew he’d gone on down the line, inspecting the others. They were all the newest recruits, but the others, to a young man, were, from what Shep could gather, wet behind the ears in almost all ways.

And there wasn’t a single one who knew how to wield a shovel like he could. And for what it was worth, at that moment, Shep couldn’t help but to half smile. “Thanks, Regis,” he grunted as he scooped and slung more earth.

And then he heard a rifle shot, followed by two more. And then a man’s shout: “Hey now!” growled the big voice. It was Cowley . . .

Shep used the shovel to vault up out of his hole. The other five were all down in their holes with their hands on their heads; two of them prairie-dogged up when Shep tore by. He snarled, ducking as he ran. “Keep down!”

They did.

He made for the shots, which continued at random intervals, but he no longer heard Cowley’s voice.

Shep reached out of raw instinct to his waist, clawing for a sidearm, but where it normally rode, at least back on the ranch. There was nothing but sweat-sodden wool trousers and braces.

He cursed, remembering as soon as his fingertips felt nothing that he was in the army now. And it felt as though he was as far from Texas as a man could get—back East at the US Army training ground in Virginia.

So why was someone shooting? Gunfire happened all the time here, but this time, there was something about it, in addition to Cowley’s shout, that had made them all look up. It was close, and they were definitely not at the rifle shooting range—nowhere near it. They were behind the barracks.

Then he had no time for further speculation, because his scurrying, low-walking strides brought him to the nearest large thing behind which to take shelter, the bunkhouse of his company.

He could dart inside and rummage in his gear until he found his revolver and knife. But why? They’d taken his bullets when he’d arrived. And the knife? As nice a piece as it was—a gift from Regis, who’d had it made especially for him—it would be nearly useless against a gun-armed enemy. If that’s what was up ahead.

As if in response to this thought, two more shots cranked out, one ricocheting off something. He’d heard plenty of bullets spanging off rock to know what it was.

But it was the third sound that chilled him and told him to keep moving, come what may. Somebody had shouted, and was in distress. And that meant he had to help.

He and Regis had both learned that bit of selflessness from their mama, dead these past few years, but as good-hearted a person as Shep knew he was ever likely to meet.

The sound he’d heard was a yelp, the very same one he’d heard men make when they’d been wounded, mostly shot, back in Texas. He’d been through a number of rough scrapes down there, from an attack by a band of rogue Apache to not infrequent and random raids by border pirates looking to thieve cattle and horses and anything else of value. And then there was Señorita Valdez, the brute killer and her deadly gang, who’d kept him prisoner, chained to a rock wall in a cave. Again, Regis and his men had ridden to Shep’s rescue.

He bit back the bitter thoughts rising in his gorge. He was more beholden to his older brother than any man ought to be, but he needed to get over it.

The sound brought him back to the present. The yelp. It sounded like it could be any man. And yet it had to be Cowley; somehow, he knew it was Cowley.

Had the man been shot? If so, how badly?

Too many nervous-making thoughts skittered in and out of his mind as he edged closer to the end of the building. Once he got there, he’d have to poke his head around the corner, risking a look.

Shep felt sweat slip into his eyes, then slide down his face. He scrunched his eyes quickly and opened them again.

Before he got to the corner of the building, he glanced back to his right, far behind toward where he’d loped from. His latrine-digging companions were still there, cowering, but emboldened enough to poke their faces out of their holes.

He cut his gaze back to the task at hand. And shook his head. Keep moving, Shep, he told himself. To heck with those other fools. Cowley—or someone—needed help. He heard no other voices. Where was everyone?

He made the corner and, keeping low, dropped down onto his left knee. If the shooter was looking in his dire. . .