The Butcher of Bear Creek

Book 7: Sidewinders

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns; Thrillers

Synopsis

There are Old West heroes of courage and conviction—and then there are the Sidewinders. Bullets fly in this rowdy adventure from the bestselling authors.
 
William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone bring back those beloved, bumbling cowboys, Bo Creel and Scratch Morton. As usual, despite their best efforts, deep trouble has a way of tracking them down . . .

Knocking on Trouble's Door

There's nothing like family. At least that's what people say. But when Bo and Scratch come home to Bear Creek for a long-overdue visit, Bo's family kindly invites him to turn around and leave. His old friends and neighbors turn tail and run when they see him. Next thing he knows, he's in jail for the brutal murder of two saloon girls in neighboring Cottonwood. Unfortunately, the real killer looks astonishingly like Bo. Now, with his buddy in jail, Scratch needs to ride to the rescue, if he can escape the clutches of the beautiful assistant to a traveling snake oil salesman. With Bear Creek in an uproar, a man with Bo Creel's face and body is about to kill again. And the worst is still hovering on the horizon: a family secret that could turn Bo's hair bone-white.
 
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: June 1, 2013

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 244

Sample

Scratch Morton reined his horse to a halt, drew in a deep breath, let it back out in a gusty sigh of contentment, and said, “Smell that, Bo. Ain’t it good to be breathin’ the fresh air of Texas again?”

“We’ve been back in Texas for several weeks,” Bo Creel pointed out dryly. “I’ve taken a few breaths in that time.”

“Yeah, but we’re closer to home now,” Scratch countered. “As a matter of fact . . .” He rose in his stirrups so he could peer into the distance. “See that line of trees? If I ain’t mistaken, that’s where Bear Creek runs. Bear Creek!”

Bo smiled and told his friend, “I think you’re right. It won’t be long now.”

“As the saloon girl said to the travelin’ preacher,” Scratch responded with a chuckle.

Scratch was right about one thing, Bo thought: it was good to get back to their old stomping grounds.

They had grown up not far from here, in the plains and rolling hills of south central Texas. This was one of the areas that had been settled first, way back when Texas wasn’t the Lone Star State or even an independent republic, as it had been for nine years, but before that, when it was still a part of Mexico. The Creel and Morton clans had been some of the first American families to immigrate here.

They hadn’t been acquainted with each other at the time. The families had met during the Runaway Scrape, that terrible exodus during the Texas Revolution when the rebellious American settlers had been forced to flee before the wrath of Santa Anna’s army.

Bo and Scratch, little more than boys at the time, had become fast friends, and when the Texicans had finally turned and made their stand on the plains of San Jacinto, the two youngsters had been right there on the field of battle.

That had been their baptism of fire. They had saved each other’s lives that day, the first of many times in the more than forty years since then.

The thing of it was, that battle easily could have turned out to be the end of their adventuring. Once Texas was free, Bo and Scratch had grown into young manhood, and Bo had already settled down, with a wife and young child, when tragedy struck and took his family away from him.

Unable to stay there and face constant reminders of what he had lost, Bo had gone on the drift . . . and naturally enough, Scratch, his best friend and always the more footloose of the pair, had gone along with him. Probably neither of them had thought at the time that their odyssey would last for decades . . . but that was what fate held in store for them.

They had been back to Texas on a number of occasions since then. It had been about ten years, though, since they had visited their boyhood homes. The Creels and the Mortons still lived in these parts, most of them on farms and ranches scattered along the banks of Bear Creek. The stream gave its name to one of the settlements in the area. About five miles downstream from the town of Bear Creek was a smaller settlement known as Cottonwood that wasn’t much more than a couple of saloons and a trading post.

At least that was all there was to it the last time Bo and Scratch had been here. Bo was curious to see how much, if any, it and the town of Bear Creek had grown.

“I think we’ve sat here long enough,” Bo said. “Let’s go see how the place has been getting along without us.”

A grin stretched across Scratch’s leathery face.

“I’m right with you, pard,” he said.

The two Texans heeled their mounts into motion.

Despite the fact that the two men were edging past middle age, they both rode tall and straight in the saddle. Bo was dressed mostly in black, in a somber suit and hat that some said made him look like a preacher. He carried only one revolver, a Colt with well-worn walnut grips.

Scratch, on the other hand, was more of a dandy, sporting a cream-colored Stetson and a fancy fringed buckskin jacket. A pair of long-barreled, nickel-plated Remington revolvers with ivory grips rode at his hips in hand-tooled holsters. His hair had turned silver at a relatively early age, while Bo’s dark brown hair was only touched here and there with gray.

They were both handsome men, and Scratch had romanced a number of widows from the Rio Grande to the Canadian border, sometimes having to leave town in a hurry when one of the “widows” turned out to have been lying about her marital status, resulting in an angry husband looking for Scratch.

Bo had a habit of being more discreet in his involvements with women, although there had been some along the way. He had no interest in getting married and settling down again, and at this late date, it wasn’t likely Scratch would change his stripes and take that plunge, either.

Mostly they just drifted, taking work when they had to, usually as cowhands. But they had done other things, too, such as hiring on to help a federal marshal transport some prisoners from Arkansas to Texas.

That job had turned out to be pretty troublesome, but when it was over, Bo and Scratch found themselves at loose ends in their home state, so when the notion struck them to pay a visit to Bear Creek, it had been easy enough to amble in that direction.

Bo spotted something ahead of them in the trail, coming toward them and moving in and out of patches of shade cast by the trees on either side. After a moment he recognized it as a wagon being pulled by a team of mules.

Scratch had seen the wagon, too, and as he peered at the man on the driver’s seat, he said, “Good Lord, is that old Avery Hollins?”

“Can’t be,” Bo said. “He’d have to a hundred and fifty years old by now. He was ancient when we were still youngsters.”

“Well, he seemed ancient to us, anyway,” Scratch replied with a grin. “But that thing on his head sure looks like that old stovepipe hat he always wore.”

“It does,” Bo admitted. “I reckon we’ll find out, because whoever it is, he’s coming this direction.”

The two men kept riding, and within minutes the wagon rolled within hailing distance of them. Scratch raised a hand and called, “Hold on there, old-timer.”

The man on the wagon hauled back on the reins and brought the mules to a halt. His body was so bony under his clothes that he looked like he was made out of sticks and leather. He wore baggy wool trousers and a homespun shirt with a long, black leather vest over it. The stovepipe hat perched on his egg-shaped head had an eagle feather stuck in the band. His face was a mass of wrinkles. Bushy white eyebrows and tufts of white hair sticking out of his ears seemed to be the only hair on his head.

“As I live and breathe,” Scratch went on. “Avery Hollins. It is you.”

“Of course it’s me,” the old-timer said in a high-pitched voice. “This is my wagon, ain’t it? These is my mules. Who in blazes did you expect it to be?”

Scratch grinned.

“Well, to be honest,” he said, “if anybody had asked me, I likely would’ve said that you’d been dead twenty years or more.”

“Well, you’d have been wrong, wouldn’t you?” Hollins demanded. His watery eyes squinted at them. “Do I know you? Who the hell are you boys?”

“You don’t recognize us? I’m Scratch Morton, and this is Bo Creel. You knew us ages ago.”

Hollins’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Bo Creel!” he exploded. He reached for the whip in the socket at the edge of the seat next to him. “You stay away from me! Get out of my way!”

The whip popped like a shot next to the ear of one of the leaders. The mule surged forward in its traces, and the others followed suit. Bo and Scratch had to yank their horses hurriedly to the side of the trail to get out of the way.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Scratch yelled at Hollins as the old-timer sent the wagon bouncing and rattling past them. “You nearly ran us down!”

“Leave me be!” Hollins shouted back at him. He shook the whip at the two men on horseback. “Keep your distance or I’ll whip the hides off both of you!”

Scratch’s face twisted in anger. He reached for his right-hand Remington.

“Hold on,” Bo told him sharply, gesturing for Scratch to leave the revolver where it was. “You can’t go threatening the old pelican with a gun.”

“I don’t see why not,” Scratch said hotly. “He threatened to whip us.”

Hollins kept urging his team on, faster and faster. Dust boiled up from the wagon’s wheels now. The old man twisted on the seat to throw a look of fear over his shoulder.

“Something’s wrong,” Bo said. “He’s really spooked.”

“Well, I’m really confused, and a little mad, to boot. What a welcome home that was.”

Bo frowned in thought as he stared after the wagon.

“He didn’t really go loco until you mentioned my name,” he pointed out to Scratch. “It’s like when he realized who I was, it terrified him.”

“I don’t see why it would. You’re pretty much harmless. We both are. Well, except to outlaws and rustlers and the like. We’ve tangled with a few of them.”

“A few,” Bo repeated, his voice dry with irony again.

In their wanderings, circumstances had forced him and Scratch to shoot it out with more lawbreakers than he could remember. Of course, the two of them had been accused of being outlaws more than once, he reminded himself.

“I guess we shouldn’t let it bother us too much,” Scratch went on. “Avery Hollins always was as crazy as a hoot owl. I remember he used to say that an old Indian had taught him how to turn himself invisible. Claimed he caught himself a ghost horse once, too.”

“Those were just stories he made up to entertain the kids around here,” Bo said.

Scratch let out a snort.

“I don’t care. When a fella spends all his time makin’ up stories, sooner or later he winds up touched in the head.”

Bo couldn’t argue with that.

The dust from the wagon had settled now. Bo lifted his reins, nodded toward the line of trees that marked the course of the creek, and said, “Let’s ride on to town. Maybe when we get there somebody can tell us what put such a burr under old Avery’s saddle.”

When they reached the creek they turned west, following the stream as it gradually curved south. The creek flowed lazily between eight-foot-tall banks lined with cottonwoods and live oaks.

A short time later, Bo and Scratch spotted the steeples of the Baptist church and the Methodist church, which sat at opposite ends of the settlement. That hadn’t changed in the decade since they had been here last.

The town of Bear Creek had grown some, though, Bo saw as the trail he and Scratch had been following turned into the main street. A number of businesses stood on either side of the road, including the Bear Creek Hotel and the First State Bank. The office of the Bear Creek Sentinel was on the right. The town hadn’t had a newspaper the last time the two drifters were here. Brantley’s Livery Stable was still operating, but it had some competition now in the form of Hersheimer’s Livery. Old Doc Perkins’s shingle still hung in front of his office, and it appeared that Ed Tyson was still practicing law.

The biggest change was on the east side of the creek, which was spanned by a sturdy wooden bridge. The last time Bo and Scratch had been in Bear Creek, there were two saloons over there, and that was all. Now there were more than a dozen buildings on that side of the stream, and even though it was just the middle of the afternoon, Bo heard the rinky-tink strains of piano music in the air. The so-called bad side of town had grown a lot.

Scratch licked his lips, nodded toward the proliferation of drinking establishments, and said, “Would you look over there? Progress has come to Bear Creek.”

“Some people might argue about your definition of progress,” Bo said. “Vice and respectability usually go hand in hand, though. They call it civilization.”

That brought a laugh from the silver-haired Texan.

“Let’s go across the creek and cut the trail dust,” Scratch suggested. “You reckon Lauralee Parker still owns the Southern Belle Saloon?”

“One way to find out,” Bo said. He headed his horse toward the bridge.

Several people were on the boardwalks of Bear Creek’s business section. As he and Scratch rode past, Bo noticed the way they were looking at him. Some shot apprehensive glances in his direction, while others stared in open disbelief. When they had ridden a few more yards, he said quietly to Scratch, “Looks like these people are just as spooked to see me as old Avery was.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Scratch said. “What in blazes is goin’ on here, Bo?”

“I don’t know,” Bo replied with a shake of his head, “but I don’t like it much.”

“I don’t cotton to it, either. You want to turn around and get out of here?”

Bo thought about it for a second, then shook his head again.

“No, we’ve come this far. I want to see my pa, and Riley and Cooper and Hank and their families. I’m sure you want to see your kinfolks, too.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Plus it’d sort of feel like we were running away from trouble, and you know how that rubs me the wrong way.”

Bo smiled.

“Yeah, any time there’s trouble, you generally light a shuck right toward it, don’t you?”

Scratch didn’t answer that question. Instead he said, “Look, there’s Jesse Peterson.” Without waiting for Bo to reply, he reined his horse toward the boardwalk on the left side of the street and hailed a man who stood there. “Hey, Jesse.”

Peterson was about their age and owned a saddle shop. Bo and Scratch had known him since all three of them were youngsters. Peterson was a stocky man with graying red hair and bushy side whiskers. His beefy face wore a frown as Scratch rode toward him, followed by Bo.

“Scratch Morton,” Peterson declared dubiously. “That really is you, isn’t it?”

Scratch grinned and said, “Yep. And Bo’s with me, too.”

“I see him,” Peterson said. The man’s voice was as chilly as the blue northers that sometimes swept down across Texas from the Panhandle.

Bo brought his horse alongside Scratch’s mount. He said, “What’s going on here, Jesse? You act like you’re not glad to see me, and when we ran into old Avery Hollins out on the trail, he seemed like he was scared of us.”

“You didn’t hurt him, did you?” Peterson asked with a note of alarm in his voice.

“Hurt him?” Scratch repeated. “Why in tarnation would we hurt a harmless old coot like Avery?”

“Figured you’d be just as bad as he is,” Peterson snapped. “The two of you always were peas in a pod. Why don’t you go away and leave us alone?”

Scratch flushed with anger. He started to swing down from his saddle, saying, “By God—”

Bo reached over and touched his friend’s arm.

“Don’t,” he said. “Just let it go.”

“But it’s startin’ to look like everybody in the whole town’s gone loco,” Scratch protested.

Peterson said, “You’re a fine one to talk about somebody going loco.” He slid a hand under his coat. “I’ve got a pistol here. If you try anything, I’ll—”

“If we wanted to gun you down, some little pistol wouldn’t stop us,” Scratch said.

Peterson kept his hand under his coat and backed toward the doorway behind him.

“Leave me alone,” he said. “The only reason I haven’t started yelling for the marshal is because the two of you used to be my friends, but if you bother me, I swear I’ll—”

Scratch interrupted him again.

“Come on, Bo,” he said as he hauled his horse’s head around. “I can’t listen to any more of this craziness. Maybe if we get drunk enough, things’ll start to make sense.”

Peterson’s florid face paled.

“You’re going across the creek?” he asked in a hushed, frightened voice.

“What business is that of yours?” Scratch demanded.

Peterson didn’t answer. Instead he turned abruptly and broke into a run along the boardwalk. Bo and Scratch were both startled. Scratch exclaimed, “What the hell!”

“Something’s mighty wrong here, partner,” Bo said. “Come on. Maybe we’ll get some straight answers on the other side of the creek.”

“Folks were always more plainspoken over there, that’s true.”

During the conversation with Jesse Peterson, the boardwalks on both sides of the street had cleared out, Bo noted. It was like everybody had scurried for cover when they saw him and Scratch. That made no sense.

Scratch had come to the same conclusion. He said, “Folks cleared out like ol’ Santa Anna his own self just rode into town with the whole blamed Mexican army behind him. None of this makes a lick of sense, Bo.”

“Not so far,” Bo admitted, “but maybe there’s a logical explanation.”

As they reached the western end of the bridge and started across it, four men on horseback were riding onto the bridge from the eastern end. Judging from the way a couple of them swayed in their saddles, they looked like they had been drinking. When they saw Bo and Scratch riding toward them, all four men stopped short.

The bridge was about sixty feet long. Despite their age, both Bo and Scratch still had excellent eyesight, so they could see the faces of the men at the other end of the bridge. Bo didn’t recognize any of them, but they were all young, in their early twenties, he judged. That meant they would have been just kids the last time he and Scratch were in these parts, if they had even been around Bear Creek back then.

All four men wore range clothes and had lariats looped on their saddles. Bo figured them for cowhands who worked on the ranches along Bear Creek. This was good, fertile rangeland around here, and the first herds of longhorns that had gone up the cattle trails to the railroad in Kansas after the war had come from this area.

Bo and Scratch kept riding. The cowboys stayed where they were, sitting in their saddles and regarding the two older men with hostile stares. Their horses blocked the eastern end of the bridge.

“I don’t much like the looks of this,” Scratch said under his breath. “Those fellas look like they’re on the prod.”

“Yeah, and I think they’ve been drinking, too,” Bo said. “That’s not a very good combination.”

“Want to turn around and go back?”

“We talked about that,” Bo said, his eyes narrowing. “I don’t cotton to it, either.”

Scratch chuckled.

“We’re outnumbered two to one,” he pointed out. “And they’re a heap younger than us.”

“That just means they’ll underestimate us, doesn’t it?”

They were in the middle of the bridge now. Suddenly one of the cowboys nudged his horse forward. The other three followed suit. Bo and Scratch had to rein in as the four riders clattered toward them. The cowboys didn’t stop until they had closed the gap to about ten feet.

The one who had started forward first asked, “Is your name Creel?”

“That’s right,” Bo said. “Do I know you, son?”

“No, but you match the description,” the young man shot back. He was slender, with a foxlike face and fair hair under his Stetson. Now that Bo was closer, he could see that the young man’s clothes were a little cleaner and more expensive than a cowboy’s usual garb. The fella might not be a typical forty-a-month-and-found puncher after all, although the other three certainly were. He went on, “And I’m sure as hell not your son, so don’t call me that.”

“No offense meant,” Bo said. “If you and your friends will move aside a mite, we’ll go on past. This bridge is wide enough for all of us.”

“The hell it is,” the young man snapped. “And if you think I’m gonna let you go across the creek after what you’ve done, you’re crazy.”

“After what I’ve—mister, you’re the one who’s crazy. My partner and I just rode into Bear Creek a few minutes ago. I haven’t done anything around here for a long time.”

The young man sneered.

“Yeah, it figures you’d lie about it,” he said. “No-account bastard like you.”

“By God, that tears it!” said Scratch. “Get out of our way, you young pup, or—”

“You’re not going anywhere,” the young man said. “We’re holding you here for the law. Grab ’em, boys!”

With tha. . .