Taylor Callahan, Circuit Rider

Book 1: Taylor Callahan, Circuit Rider

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

JOHNSTONE COUNTRY. THE BULLET STOPS HERE.

Introducing one of the most unusual heroes of the lawless West—a mysterious man in black who rides from town to town, delivering hope, healing, and hard-fought justice . . . his way.

In his younger days, Taylor Callahan didn’t know right from wrong—and didn’t much care either. As a Confederate bushwhacker, renegade outlaw, and all-around hellraiser, he gave the devil himself a run for his money. Most folks figured Taylor would end up swinging from a noose or shot dead in poker game. But somewhere along the road to perdition, he decided to change his wicked ways. To atone for his sins. And to fight the good fight—against the evil that men do. . . .

So he became a traveling preacher.

But Taylor Callahan is no ordinary preacher.  He rides the western circuit looking to help lost souls. But his mission of peace takes a violent turn when he enters the godforsaken town of Falstaff, Texas. Better known to locals as “False Hope,” this one-time paradise has become a purgatory for homesteaders—thanks to a greedy rancher, corrupt mayor, and notorious confidence man. Even so, Callahan vows to keep his Colt .45 in his saddle bag. But when these lowlife devils pull out sticks of dynamite, a man has to do what a man has to do—before the whole town is blown to kingdom come. . . .
 
Live Free. Read Hard.

Release date: May 24, 2022

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 384

Sample

Texas 1875

There wasn’t much to the town of Nathan, if anyone ever called it a town. No post office, no bank, not even a church. The lack of the latter never stopped a man like the Reverend Taylor Callahan. Why, the last town the lean, broad-shouldered, dark-headed man on the white horse had preached in, a little burg in the Creek Nation, his so-called church had been inside a livery stable, and the only reason there was a roof over the heads of Callahan and twelve women, six kids, and three full-blood Creek men plus one quarter-breed was because of the thunderhead that whipped up all of a sudden.

Nathan, Texas, didn’t even have a livery stable. But there wasn’t a cloud in the sky on that hot summer day.

By Callahan’s quick count, the little burg on the banks of the Red River had four saloons, six cribs, and something that billed itself as Honest Crockett’s Gambling Emporium. There was, allegedly, a ferry, but no one seemed to be working it on this day, so Callahan eventually stopped ringing the bell on the Indian Nations side of the river and swam his white horse across. Sometimes, that river could resemble the Red Sea, but the rains must have held off, and Callahan and his gelding made it across with hardly a struggle.

There was also a dead man on Nathan’s one street. As Callahan rode toward the corpse, he thought how this might explain why there was no ferry operator, that he had up and got himself killed. The body lay face-up, spread-eagled, with a bloody hole in the center of his chest, eyes open, left hand clutching what appeared to be a writ, and a badge pinned to his vest that read Sheriff’s Deputy.

So much for the dead ferryman theory.

The gelding snorted and fought the bit, which was understandable—Callahan didn’t particularly care to gawk at corpses himself, but long ago he had developed a curious nature.

A long-barreled Colt, probably a .45 caliber, remained holstered on the dead deputy’s right hip. His right hand, now being sniffed at by a mangy dog, looked like he had been pointing, perhaps at the man who had put the bullet in his chest.

“Scat,” Callahan told the dog.

The cur looked up.

“Scat,” Callahan barked, with more force, and his eyes turned cold and mean. The dog quickly turned away and trotted toward the alley between two of the cribs.

Callahan studied the town, which didn’t take long. People were inside the saloons and gambling hall—it might have been too early for business in the cribs—and muffled voices traveled through the open windows and doorways, but no one came outside to greet the stranger in town. He looked at the edge of town, where the street dead-ended at a cemetery. No one was digging a grave, either. Callahan meant to just glance at the cemetery, but he couldn’t help but notice what had to be four recent crosses. He could tell because they weren’t dry-rotted or wind-blown or knocked down by coyotes digging up some supper to be found in the shallow graves.

A door finally opened, banging shut, and Callahan turned his attention to the closest crib on the other side of the street.

A woman with patches of clothes covering most of her wares leaned against a hitching rail in front of her picket hut, smoking a cigarette, red hair disheveled, her face almost matching the dead deputy’s in terms of paleness.

“Man needs burying,” Callahan said.

The prostitute took a final drag on her smoke before flicking it into the dust. “Reckon so,” she said, and let out a ragged cough.

“Might there be an undertaker in this metropolis?” Callahan said.

“Nope.” She pulled out the makings and started working on another cigarette.

“Too bad.” Callahan titled his head toward the cemetery. “From the looks of things, an undertaker could make a killing in this little burg.” He smiled at his joke. Undertaker. Killing. He started thinking of how he might use this in a sermon down the road.

The woman didn’t seem amused.

“I could give him a funeral.” Callahan jutted out his jaw toward what was labeled “Boot Hill,” but wasn’t high enough to keep the Red, when it felt like flooding, from washing away the dead. His plan was to tell her how much he typically charged for preaching funerals, not that a soiled dove had a say in these matters, but it was also highly unlikely that Nathan, Texas, had a mayor or town council, either. He could bury the poor soul and maybe get a meal. Someone was frying up salt pork in one of the saloons, and he bet some place served coffee as well as forty-rod whiskey. Maybe get a little grain for the gelding, possibly pocket a dollar or two for his troubles, and be on his way to . . . well . . . wherever he wound up.

The woman coughed out something, but Callahan couldn’t catch what she said. He turned back to watch her strike a match against her thumbnail and take a few long drags on her new smoke, exhaling through the nose.

“Ma’am?” Callahan said.

The woman flicked ash and spit. “Said, ‘Your funeral.’”

“I just preach them,” Callahan said.

The woman coughed out her guts again, pulled hard on the cigarette, exhaled, spit, and said, “No. I meant . . .” She had to cough more before she finished. “. . . meant it’ll be your funeral. If you move that law dog.”

Callahan let those words sink in. The roads people take, he thought. He could’ve stuck to the Texas Road or crossed the Red at Doan’s, farther west. He could’ve turned east in the Indian Nations and explored Arkansas, or west into Comanche and Kiowa territory and likely got his scalp lifted. Instead, he found himself here on a hot afternoon with a corpse a few feet away, and his horse not enjoying the scent of a lawman cut down in his prime.

“Easy, boy,” Callahan said, tightening his grip on the reins, then backing the horse a few feet from the dead man. He looked back at the woman, and let her finish her smoke. When she flipped that butt away, he waited for her to cough up what was left of her rotting lungs, but she just wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and yawned.

“You just plan on letting him feed the buzzards and ravens?” Callahan said. “It might curb your business.”

She shrugged. “I could use a leave of absence.”

If it weren’t for the fact that a lawman was lying dead in the street, Callahan might have laughed at that comeback. It came out much better than his undertaker-killing quip.

The batwing doors of the saloon across the street squeaked open, then started the rat-a-tat banging on the hinges. Spurs jingled.

“There’s the man you gotta talk to,” the haggard, hoarse woman said, and she gave Callahan a quick nod before pushing through her door. He heard the bolt shoved into place after the door closed, though neither door nor lock would keep anyone, or any cockroach, out.

“This is my lucky day,” a voice drawled on the warped planks underneath the awning of the saloon. “We gets to kill two lawmen in one day.”

Callahan thought: Speaking of cockroaches . . .

Twisting in the saddle, Callahan eyed a man in striped britches with two ivory-handled Remingtons on his hips, ribbon tie, red shirt, gray hat, pale eyes, and a blond mustache waxed and twisted. He couldn’t have been much older than twenty. The man’s hands rested on the butts of his revolvers, and a toothpick bounced up and down between his thin, pale lips.

Moving the reins into his right hand, Callahan slowly brought his left hand to his unbuttoned Prince Albert, then slowly pulled away the coat to reveal two important features, or lack thereof, about his wardrobe.

No badge.

No guns.

He smiled. “Hate to disappoint you, son,” Callahan told the punk, “but the only law I know is the Word. The Truth.”

The toothpick catapulted about a foot and fell onto the dirt.

“Preacher man, huh?” the punk said.

“That’s about the size of it.” Callahan’s head tilted toward the corpse. “And I’d like to see that this man gets a proper funeral.” As proper as could be had in a Sodom like Nathan, Texas. “A prayer and a song. I’d dig the grave myself.”

“Well . . .” The gunman stepped off the planks and into the dust. “The problem, Preacher Man, is that me and the boys got us a bet.” He turned slightly toward the batwing doors. “Ain’t that right, boys?”

A veritable Goliath pushed through the doors. He wore buckskins and a slouch hat, and carried a sawed-off shotgun in his massive hands. The wood strained against his two hundred and fifty stinking pounds as he moved to the right of the punk. A smaller man, in a black hat and red and white polka dot bandanna, came out next and moved to the leader’s left. This one had a revolver on his right hip, and he was smoking a cigar.

“What’s the bet?” Callahan asked.

“See how long it takes before there ain’t nothin’ left of Deputy Giddings but his bones.”

Callahan raised his head, as though thinking, which he was. He wet his lips, then laughed, and slipped out of the saddle. Still holding the reins, now in his left hand, he knelt by the corpse, and pried the writ from the left hand. He didn’t read the paper, but looked at the fist.

“He hasn’t come out of rigor mortis,” Callahan said. “It’s a hot day, fairly humid this close to the river, and this is a land of insects. That’ll make him rot faster. He glanced at the writ, and then pressed the paper against the dead man’s cheeks. He’s been dead, what, six hours?”

The cigar smoker pulled a pocket watch from a vest pocket, glanced at it, shrugged, and answered, “More like eight.”

Nodding, Callahan rose, and kicked the dead man’s closest boot. “That sounds right,” Callahan said. “His feet ain’t stiff yet.”

Smiling, he asked, “Might I inquire as to what each of you bet?”

“Two days,” said Goliath.

“One,” said the punk.

“Two-forty-seven Wednesday,” said the cigar smoker with pride. “I’m all for being specific.”

Callahan nodded. He didn’t even know what day it was.

“Well,” he said, and read the writ, nodded, and dropped it between the dead man’s legs. “Which one of you is Johnnie Harris?”

“That’d be me,” said the punk.

“This warrant says bank robbery and murder, and with the Indian Territory just a ferry ride away, if you can find the ferryman, I don’t think you’ll want to wait around to see how long it takes this poor gent to be nothing but bones. You see, he ain’t even bloating.” Callahan pressed his right boot on the man’s stomach and laughed. “Boys, you should have seen some of the bodies back during the late war up in Missouri. I’ve seen a midget swell up till he’s about the size of . . .” He stopped, stopped and picked up the writ, read some, and looked at Goliath. “I take it you’re Big Jim?”

“No,” said the cigar smoker. “That’s Wolf. Those fool lawmen can’t get nothing right. The name here is Bigham. Not Big Jim.”

“That’s good to know,” Callahan said, and he went on, pointing at the dead deputy’s face. “Nothing leaking from his mouth or nose.” His head tilted slightly. “Or ears.” Shaking his head, Callahan removed the boot and pointed at the face. “You gotta wait till he turns green. Then, and I’m guessing in a week or so, when he starts becoming red—that’ll be on account that his blood’s rotting, like all the rest of him inside. The way that Major General in the Heavens made man is remarkable. He swells up to double, quadruple his living size, then shrivels up to practically nothing.”

The three killers looked dumbstruck, which was Callahan’s intention.

“You ain’t no preacher,” Johnnie Harris said.

“Oh, I beg to differ but I most certainly am. Ordained even. Not grounded to any one church, I’m a circuit rider. The Reverend Callahan. Taylor Callahan. Taylor was my daddy’s ma’s maiden name, you see.”

He wet his lips, studied the deputy’s body again, and said, “But you do have to take into account the carrion. They might accelerate the proceedings. But this close to an establishment that’ll be attracting all sorts of gamblers and wayfarers—I bet the lights are blazing till sunrise—that might scare off the buzzards, even some of the bugs.” He turned and pointed at the crib. “And I bet that lady makes a lot of racket in her business. She sounded like a locomotive with her huffing and coughing. That’ll scare off a lot of those that eat the dead, so, that could add to your time here.”

“You talk too much, Preacher,” the punk said.

Wolf wasn’t looking so tough or big now. He coughed, spit, and wiped the dribble off his chin with the hand that didn’t hold the shotgun.

“All I’m saying, boys,” Callahan said in an even tone, “is that I’d like to bury this man, say a few words over him, and be on my way.”

“We’re gonna bury you, Preacher, after we see how long it takes your corpse to . . . to . . . to . . .”

Callahan finished for him. “. . . skeletonize.”

The punk spit, and drew the Remington on his right hip, but, for the time being, he kept the barrel pointed at the dirt.

“I am not here to harm you lads,” Callahan said. “But I can declare the winner of your bet, so you needn’t wait and risk capture and a triple hanging, or lynching if this dead man has many friends. The winner is either Wolf or Mr. Bigham. I’ve been on the road so long, I’m not sure as what day it is. So you boys can light out, and figure out who won the bet . . .”

“It’s me!” cried out Bigham.

Callahan smiled politely. “I’ll see to our late deputy, give him a few kind words, and six feet of sod to cover him till we all go home.”

“You’re going home now,” the punk said.

“Johnnie,” Bigham said, “he ain’t got a gun. And he’s a preacher.”

“He talks too much.”

“Most preachers do,” Callahan said with a laugh.

“You’ve talked your last.” Johnnie Harris let the punkiest smile cross his face. “But I tell you what. I’ll give you more of a chance than we give that law dog. Grab his hog leg. Let’s see if you can shoot as straight as you talk.”

“Johnnie . . .” Wolf pleaded.

Callahan looked at the holstered revolver on the dead man’s hip. Shaking his head, the preacher glanced at each man. “Boys, you don’t want me to take a gun in my hand. I haven’t touched a Colt in, gosh, ten years?”

“You better touch this one,” Johnnie Harris said, “because after I fill your belly with lead, I’m a-gonna kill that horse of yourn, too.”

Callahan dropped the reins. The horse, as though understanding what was about to happen, trotted over to the nearest water trough and began slaking its thirst. Callahan stepped toward the dead man and looked at the holstered revolver. His eyes raised toward the punk.

“You don’t really want me to do this, do you?”

“I’m gonna count to five,” the punk said. “At five, I’m cocking my piece and killing you and the horse. I promise you I won’t draw till I say five. One.”

Callahan waited.

“Two.”

He reached for the revolver, waiting to hear the next number, but the punk was cocky, or wanted to drag out this dime-museum play as long as he could.

An eternity later, he said, “Three.”

Callahan pulled out the Colt. Yes, a .45. Heavy. But the balance felt good.

“Four.”

His finger slipped into the trigger guard, and his thumb rested on the hammer.

“Five!”

The first bullet shattered Johnnie Harris’s right wrist, causing him to drop the .44 Remington into the street. The second splintered the stock of the shotgun Wolf wielded, and the giant touched off both barrels, which splintered the far column and sent that side of the awning crashing down, showering the behemoth with the thatch, straw and sod that served as the awning’s roof. The recoil of the shotgun must have pulled the big man’s shoulder out of the socket, and Wolf screamed like a horse-kicked coyote.

The third bullet struck the holstered revolver on Bigham’s hip, ricocheted into the boardwalk, and left the cigar smoker on his knees, clutching his stinging right hand and yelling out all sorts of blasphemies. By then, the punk was trying to find the other revolver, but he must not have been ambidextrous because he grabbed for the gun with his ruined right hand and cried out in pain when he couldn’t pull it even half an inch from the holster.

Then he saw the cavernous barrel off a .45-caliber Colt staring at his forehead, and he fell to his knees and cried out for mercy.

And it came to pass, Taylor Callahan would say a few nights later at a revival in Denison, that the honest citizens of Nathan, Texas, emerged from their places of business, even the ramshackle saloon in which the three bank-robbing scoundrels had been tormenting. As honest, Callahan decided, as could be found in a town like this.

“Mister,” a man in an Abe Lincoln hat cried out, “you can have all the whiskey you want . . . on the house.”

“Mister,” said a small man in a sack suit, “you won’t even have to pay for any of my gals. You’ve saved the day, our lives, and our reputation as the most honest town in Texas.”

“Whatever you want is fine with me, sugar,” called out a woman—but not the prostitute with that awful cough—from one of the cribs.

“What I want,” Taylor Callahan said, “is to preach a funeral over this servant of the good folks of this county or some county in this state.”

“That’s what we want, too,” said a drummer.

“Let’s all gather at Boot Hill,” someone said.

“No.”

Callahan pointed the Colt between two saloons. “Up there. Far enough and high enough from the Red River so this man won’t be disturbed.”

“But . . .” The tinhorn looked at Boot Hill. “Like as not, his family’ll dig him up in a week or so and bury him where he’ll get flowers and attention. Maybe even a real stone with fancy words.”

“Today, he’s getting flowers and attention at a new cemetery.”

“But the ground’s harder up on that mess of chalk,” cried out Abe Lincoln.

Callahan smiled. “And so is a .45-caliber bullet.” He cocked the piece. “Ask Johnnie and Wolf and Bigham about that.”

The town of Nathan, Texas, fell quiet.

“Who wants to make the coffin?” Callahan asked.

When no one volunteered, he started to raise the Colt.

It turned out to be a really nice funeral. Bigham had a real good voice, and so did one of the prostitutes. Two of the tinhorns agreed to escort the prisoners over to Bonham, and the town took up a collection and gave a rawhide poke to Callahan, but the circuit rider took out only two dollars, and told the tinhorns to make sure they gave it to the sheriff in Bonham with instructions to see that it went to the dead deputy’s kin or charity of the sheriff’s choice.

“Well, you deserve more than two dollars,” said one of the prostitutes.

Callahan had stuck the .45 in his waistband. Now he drew it, examined it, and said, “Well, I’ll tell you what, folks. I’ll take this hogleg, keep it out of the hands of some miscreants like Wolf and Johnnie or Bigham. And if someone has a box of .45 shells, I’ll take that, too. Put one in the left saddlebag, and one in the right.” He grinned. “For balance. We need balance in our lives and in our travels.”

Actually, what he thought was he could sell the Colt in Dallas or Fort Worth and have enough money to pay for a hotel bed or a supper of steak instead of bacon.

“You might need that Colt and ca’tridges more’n just for balance,” the coughing soiled dove said. “Johnnie Harris . . . he got three brothers . . . and they’s meaner and crazier than their kid is by a long shot. The boy didn’t shoot down the lawman. It was the big cuss that done that. And from what I heard from Bigham, the boy didn’t even shoot down nobody when they was robbin’ that bank.”

“That ain’t true!” the wounded Harris snapped, but Callahan could tell a lie when he heard one.

“But ’em other Harrises, they won’t give even a preacher no chance.”

A townsman agreed. “You might be safe,” he suggested, “in . . . South America?”

Weeks later, upon reaching the fork in the road, Taylor Callahan reined in the white gelding, pushed up the brim of his black Boss of the Plains, kicked free of the stirrups, and swung his left leg up, hooking it over the horn. After a yawn, he stretched out his arms while the horse did its business.

He had kept meandering south, watching the country dry up, and feeling the days turn hotter. Well, he thought, that’s what happens when you ride south. Although, if I took the advice of that guy in Nathan, and kept riding to South America, I hear that the seasons flipflop down that away, so it’d be cooler. ’Course, by the time I got to South America, especially on this tub of glue bait, it’d be summer down there, and I’d just be sweating again.

This day had been particularly oppressive, he had been riding far, but he could still push on another few miles. Even the lackadaisical white gelding he rode wouldn’t mind that. On the other hand, there was a bit of shade in the patch of grass and rocks, but not many thorns, betwixt the two caliche pikes, one turning straight south, the other veering left where Callahan had a mind to go. All the way down to the ocean. Well, when he had mentioned ocean all those long miles behind him, up in San Antonio, the saloon owner, who had paid him seven bits to swamp the place and give him a personal preaching, then let him sleep in the storeroom for the night, that scalawag had corrected Callahan.

“’T’aint no ocean, Parson,” the Texian had drawled. “No sea. It’s a gulf. Gulf of Mexico, to be precise.”

“He might not see nothin’ more than the Corpus Christ Bay, exactly,” commented the bartender.

“With that nag he’s ridin’,” said the chippy, “it’ll be a miracle if he reaches the Nueces.”

“I wouldn’t give it no further than the Salado,” said the cowhand, and everybody laughed, even Callahan, since the Río Salado stretched just a few rods down the pike.

But, Callahan and Job, which is what he had come to call the white gelding, had made it this far. That’d be Job of the Land of Uz, Job of the Old Testament, Job of the patience . . . because that horse had no hurry in him.

Which Taylor Callahan didn’t mind one bit. And the Cherokee in Tahlequah had told him that the gelding wasn’t going to win any match races when he and Callahan had made the deal.

But Callahan no longer thought about San Antonio, or the ocean, gulf, sea, lake, mud puddle, whatever it turned out to be, because he had reached a fork. Which always had him recalling what his favorite pappy always said, no matter if he were stone cold sober or drunk and on his way to getting drunker.

“When you come to a fork in the road, boy, you study ’em trails real hard, and you make sure you go down the right trail, because the wrong turn can get you lost forever.”

He wondered whatever happened to that particular pappy. Obviously, he had taken a wrong fork. After all, one fine morn during hog-killin’ season, his favorite pappy left the farm on a mule, bound for Centerville, and never came back. Which wasn’t the first pappy to do that. ’Course, Pappy Number Three had good reason to skedaddle. Why the very morn after he lighted a shuck for parts unknown, the Clay County sheriff and a dozen or so of Centerville’s best riders and two of the finest shots in all of Western Missouri come looking for that particular pappy. But all they found was Callahan’s ma-maw, her sighting down a squirrel rifle, and letting them know that lessen they had rid all this far to help with the butcherin’, they’d be smart to ride back to the main road and not come a-botherin’ the Callahans no more.

Callahan was the name of Callahan’s birthin’ pappy, one of the two daddies he never met. The first pappy, the one who had nothing to do with the begetting that brought Taylor Callahan into this world, had catched the rheumatisms or load of buckshot—depending on who was doing the storytelling that particular night—and died shortly after marrying Callahan’s ma-maw, back when she had lived in Kentucky. The second pappy, being the one who married the recently widowed daughter of Fergus and Fiona Fleming—sounded like that medicine-wagon team Callahan had watched up Little Rock way—was responsible for Taylor Callahan’s being here, and had named the baby after his mama’s maiden name, his mama hailing from one of the Carolinas, North or South, nobody knew for sure, just that the family had farmed in the western part of the state, around what once was Cherokee country.

Then came the other pappies. Course, Callahan’s ma-maw being a respectable woman, the other pappies came after Callahan’s birthing pappy got struck by lightning, not knowing no better than to come out of the woods during a thunderstorm and carrying an ax on his shoulder. Some of his pappies had been good, but most of them were meaner than the Widow Morley—till, as must happen to all men and women, the end come for Ma-Maw Callahan, which is what folks called her, even though she had wedded Youngers and Washburns and Palmers and even a no-account Lingham, plus maybe some others that Callahan had forgotten after all those years.

Callahan had suggested that they carve into her stone. She Outlasted Eight Husbands, but the stonemason just carved her name and R.I.D., which he offered to correct, but Callahan laughed and said his ma, and all his pappies, and most of Clay Coun. . .