The Devil You Know

Book 2: Stoneface Finnegan Western

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

JOHNSTONE COUNTRY. LOOKING FOR TROUBLE? THEN LOOK NO FURTHER.

As a Pinkerton agent, Stoneface Finnegan faced the deadliest killers in the West. But now that he runs a saloon, he serves them hard liquor—with a shot of  harder justice . . .

THE DEVIL WALKS INTO A BAR

Stoneface Finnegan and his new partner are busy renovating The Last Drop Saloon when a very unusual stranger comes to town. He’s nothing like the prairie rat drifters, world-weary miners, and would-be outlaws who normally pass through Boar Gulch. No, he’s a big handsome devil from San Francisco, Giacomo Valucci. Valucci fancies himself an actor, but his all-too-dramatic arrival is no act. He’s come to kill Stoneface Finnegan . . .

Finnegan’s gut tells him that someone’s put a price on his head. Maybe one of his cutthroat enemies from his Pinkerton days. Or maybe not.

Giacomo Valucci seems more interested in playing the role of Jack the Ripper. He’s carving a path of mayhem and murder across the American West—and saving Stoneface Finnegan for the last act . . . and the final curtain.

Live Free. Read Hard.


 

Release date: June 29, 2021

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

The sigh, long and low, leaked out of the big man’s mouth. It could have come about because he had gulped a long-needed drink of cool water or because he’d won the biggest hand of the night at the baize tables. But neither would be true. For this man wore spatters of blood on his face and chest, and on the twitching lids of his closed eyes. Runnels of gore dripped from his long fingers as he stood over two flopped bodies, people whose heads had been all-but-separated from their neck stalks.

Those necks bore tell-tale marks—wide, purple handprints that choked life from the pair in that effortless squeeze that brought the big man such sweet, pleasing release. That pleasure was only topped by the final act of slicing the throats and feeling the warm gush of blood.

In the glow of his reverie, the big man thought he heard a tinkling bell. How nice, how soothing.

“Miss Tillis? Mr. Tillis? Yoo hoo . . . anybody here?”

The voice snapped his eyes open. It was not soothing. It was foul, the worst of interruptions, a harsh jag of light in an otherwise serene, shadowed moment.

More tinkling bell sounds, then bootsteps as the nosey woman made her way through the store out front.

The big man let out a quick breath of disgust and, with a last glance down at his latest accomplishment that, had it not been for the interruption, he might have considered one of his finest performances, he stepped toward the back door, eased it open, and slipped outside once more.

He set to his next tasks with measured motions, walking with long, sure strides across the rear loading deck of Tillis Mercantile, then down the six steps, his oversize, soft-sole brogans making no sound save for a shuffling whisper. He crossed the graveled yard and ducked low between the sagged rails of a weather-grayed fence and into the neighboring paddock, home of a sway-bellied pony.

“Good morning, sir,” he whispered to the old beast, who had not yet committed to waking from its nighttime doze.

He crossed to the pony’s water trough, which he knew from his foray through this way but hours before to be half-full. The man also knew that at any moment he would hear a scream that would likely rise to shriek pitch—women loved to draw attention to newly discovered horrors—and then haste would be required, lest he be caught by the screamer’s goodly neighbors while rinsing blood from his hands.

He set to the task with vigor, a smile tugging up the right side of his wide mouth. Since it was still early dawn and gray light was all he had to work with, he didn’t worry about the scrim of blood he knew would be under his nails, coloring the creases of his palms and fingers.

Satisfied his hands were clean enough, he once more bent low over the trough and splashed two handfuls of water on his face and throat, rubbing any flecks of blood that might still be there.

He unbuttoned the large, spattered shirt, peeled it off, and laid it on the ground, arms wide as if to welcome the rest of his ensemble.

He’d nudged his brown trousers down to his knees when the screams began. Despite his dicey situation, the big man could not help but smile. Standing on the shirt, he scuffed out of the large brogans and finished peeling off the trousers.

Beneath these clothes he wore black silk sleepwear, shirt and trousers, and black close-fitting house slippers. He bent over the soiled clothes, tied the sleeves and tails and collar into a tight bundle, and carried them with him as he bent low and left the still-drowsy pony’s paddock.

The big man resisted the urge to whistle and instead hummed a nearly silent, low tune of sheer joy that only came to him when he’d completed a performance. They had been quite the couple, he mused. No, no, not yet. Don’t give in to thoughts of the past few hours yet. Time a-plenty for that. First, he must pass behind four back yards to return to the rear of the Starr Town Hotel and Rooming House, where he’d propped open the back door with a slender wedge of wood.

Halfway to the hotel, he heard commotion as people in other homes and businesses were roused by the screaming woman’s unceasing cries.

“Ah,” he said to himself. “The thrill of discovery.”

He measured his steps, eyeing the outhouses and sagging sheds tucked at the rear of properties until he saw the one he required, though not for the usual reasons. This one, but one building from the rear of the hotel, had a widening hole behind it where earth had slumped beneath the privy. It exuded a pungent tang and he held his breath as he dropped the bundle and toed it into the reeking pit. It fetched up, so he squatted and poked a quick hand at it, lest something foul begrime him. It was enough, and the bundle toppled into the drop and out of his sight.

And sight was something he knew would work against him soon as more people woke to greet their day and to figure out who was screaming and why. What he had not counted on was being interrupted by that woman.

Why had the front door of the store been unlocked? Unless the woman had a key to the door. Perhaps she is an employee of the Tillis couple. Correct that, former employee. He indulged in a low chuckle and walked to the hotel’s back door. It was still barely propped ajar by his trusty shim. He palmed the sliver of wood, swung the door open, and stepped inside.

A steep staircase rose to his right, the same set of stairs he’d used earlier to descend from the second floor where his room awaited him. He was about to ascend when he heard footsteps on the squeaking floorboards above and then approach the stairs. A light sleeper, no doubt, roused by the muffled shouts from down the street.

He had to give that intruding woman credit, even five buildings away, he could still make out her screams. Hers was a dogged personality.

The big man stepped back from the stairs, saw no alternative, but in true thespian fashion, he rose to the role thrust upon him by the moment. He glided down the hall that led to the front of the house, turned halfway down, and tucking his hands under his arms as if he were chilled, he hunched and faced the person on the stairs.

A woman, and she carried with her a lamp. He squinted as she raised it and peered down the hall. “Oh, Mr. Bardo, you startled me.”

“And I by you, madam. Tell me, am I hearing shouts?”

She fell silent, and they both cocked an ear. “Yes, as I thought. That’s what roused me, as well. It’s early. Something must be wrong somewhere.”

“Oh dear,” he said, working up a shiver. “I sleep lightly and came down to investigate. You’ll forgive me, madam, but I was afraid it might have been you I heard, and I could not forgive myself had I not investigated.”

His words produced the effect he expected—she half-smiled and looked askew and worked her face this way and that in a blushing moment. “Oh, Mr. Bardo, you are a thoughtful man. But no, I, too, sleep lightly—something else we have in common, eh, Mr. Bardo?—and had to find out what might be happening. Besides, my day should begin about now anyway. Those biscuits won’t bake themselves.”

“Ah, yes, your lovely cooking. But I wonder if you will excuse me just now? I fear I will catch a chill should I stand about in my sleepwear and little else for much longer.”

“Oh, Mr. Bardo, please don’t let me detain you. I will have a nice warm pot of coffee brewing in no time.”

“Very good, madam. I look forward to it.”

He moved to scoot by her, but she stepped to the side half the distance he’d wished, close enough that he had to brush her as he mounted the steps. Unfortunately, he thought as he climbed the steps, she is watching me. He sighed inward and had to admit that Mr. Bardo was perhaps not one of his better roles. He listened once more after he closed his room’s door. The screaming had stopped, but he heard new voices, several, perhaps more, rising and falling like a barnyard of flustered geese.

“Let them flap and cackle,” he said. “They will talk about this performance for years to come.” Yes, he thought. I have done this tiny town of Wilmotville a generous favor. I have brought world-class artistry to their dreary lives, and they shall not soon forget it.

Ah well, he thought as he slipped out of his silk clothes. Not every role can be memorable. But they are all rewarding and, as he looked at his blood-crusted fingernails and smiled, he decided that frequently they were spectacular, too.

He splashed cold water into his wash basin and stripped down. The frigid water raised goosebumps up and down his body. He smiled even as his teeth rattled slightly. Nothing like it, he thought. A pure, clean feeling gripping him and forcing his eyes wide open.

He scrubbed and scrubbed and allowed himself to indulge in the briefest of memories of the encounter that led him to this moment, to this feeling. He’d chosen the town almost without thought, one of any such annoying little bumps of settled humanity along the tracks of Western Lodestar’s southwest run. It had been easy after that to fall in love with a woman on first sight, something he’d never had trouble with.

Their comeliness and interest and availability were always secondary matters. Fortunately for him Mrs. Tillis of Tillis Mercantile had been not only handsome and flattered by his flirtatious attentions of the previous afternoon, but she’d been a little more than willing to return his devilish darings by sliding her tongue across her lips, winking, and blushing fetchingly.

Her husband had caught sight once of her straying eyes and suitably reddened. The big man suspected this was not a first for the woman who, he noted, was obviously some years her spouse’s junior. Mr. Tillis was a flea at best, someone undeserving of a pretty woman’s devotions.

Now I, thought the big man, I am one who deserves them all. Was I not carved of marble myself, a god among men? Have women not regarded me as such my entire life? I, I alone am worthy. Also, it is my obligation, too, to return the lustful looks . . . and more, whenever possible.

But Mr. Tillis did not scold his wife forcefully, at least not in front of this stranger, a man who obviously had ample money, if his fine raiments and perfect black moustaches and oiled hair and bejeweled fingers were of any indication. Even that black patch covering his left eye lent the man an air of daring that hinted at a treachery . . . and yet it also made him appear much more vulnerable and handsome to women, if his flirtatious wife was any indication.

And if that weren’t enough, was not this stranger drawn to the most expensive two items in the store? A gold watch in a green velvet display case, and a nickel-plate revolver with bone handles etched with aces on each grip, and nested in an overly tooled black leather holster and belt studded with silver conchos.

And so the game unrolled for much of an hour late in the day. When the stranger had rubbed his perfect square jaw and smoothed his black moustaches and regarded the items with his one good eye as if deciding something, only to suck in a breath through white, square teeth, Mr. Tillis had faltered, begun to reveal his frustration with the stranger and the situation.

That was when he had told the man he would sleep on the decisions. It was not a matter of money, oh heavens no, he’d said with a chuckle and a smile, but of having to carry the items, gifts are what they would be, yes, all the way eastward on his journey, though he suspected he would make the purchases. He rarely in life refused to indulge himself in such matters. After all, he’d said with a shrug, why have money?

Knowing chuckles were exchanged between the two men. He would decide and tell the man on the morrow, before he left on the train. Would that be fair?

Oh yes, yes, Mr. Tillis had fawned. The big man had turned to leave the store, turned back, and bowed at the waist to Madam Tillis. Without taking his eyes from hers, he uttered one word . . . simply, “Enchanted.”

He turned and left the store, the tinkling of a bell and the memory of her fair blush carrying him down the street to a dining establishment. But return he did, though sooner than the pair had expected. In fact, it was well into the small hours when the big man turned up again at the mercantile, though this time through the back door.

He intentionally clunked into items in the store, making enough noise that, as he suspected, Mr. Tillis made his wary way downstairs from their living quarters, a shotgun barred across his chest. One quick knock to the head and the storekeeper was rendered unconscious. The wife, on hearing no response to her pleas, followed her husband’s route and soon succumbed to the stranger’s unforgiving intentions.

All he’d been after had been the blood, really. No, not even that, more the feeling of their lives letting go beneath his hands, though that took some hours of playfulness on his part. He’d dragged out the performance and then, with a flourish, had used a keen-edged shiny new blade from the store’s display case to deliver the encore.

He scrubbed carefully above and below his false moustache—the theatrical glue worked well but its residue was a devil of a thing. He would deal with it once he returned home. The eye patch was a simpler prop to remove, and so he did, admiring himself in the mirror of the washing stand as he did each morning. Indeed, several times daily.

While he was pleased with having chosen the false moustache and eye patch as basic, useful items, in a simple yet straightforward theatrical ruse for this final fling before his grand outing, it did seem a true shame to dim the light of his own natural radiance and beauty with props and makeup and costumery. He sighed and patted dry his face. Ah well, such are the tribulations I must endure.

But well worth the trouble. Consider it a final rehearsal before opening night, he told himself. In fact, all of them through the years had been but rehearsals for his greatest show yet, the effort he would expend in seeking out, then rendering dead the greatest foe of his life, one Rollie “Stoneface” Finnegan. The very beast responsible for every single bad thing that has ever happened to him, for robbing him of the happiness due him in life.

The big, handsome man glanced once more at his naked self in the mirror and laid out his clothes for the day. He couldn’t wait to hear the chatter at the breakfast table, and then up and down the street. The town would be abuzz with whispers of intrigue and thoughts of delicious terror. He giggled as he dressed himself.

The first bullet chewed a hole in the privy door, right beside the crescent moon. A second shot chased it. On his knees inside, with his trousers around his boots, Rollie “Stoneface” Finnegan looked up at the new ventilation and decided they looked like stars around the moon. High shots, not aimed to kill, but to scare. A third joined them. Not like the thunder pit couldn’t use more airflow, but there had to be a better way of going about it. He checked the wheel in his Schofield and thumbed back the hammer.

“Stoneface Finnegan! Come on out and I’ll make this painless.”

Rollie sighed. Here we go again. All he wanted to do was spend a night away from town, holed up with a bottle and his thoughts. It was the cabin and claim he and his business partner, Jubal “Pops” Tennyson, had taken in trade for a sizable bar tab from a back-East furniture maker who decided he was not cut out for life in the diggings.

They’d not had time to do much with either the cabin or claim yet, but each had used it off and on in the couple of months since owning it. It was an ideal spot to clear away the cobwebs and give each other a break from living cheek-to-jowl in the cramped quarters of the tent. At least they had a tent, propped as it was just behind where their saloon, The Last Drop, had stood, torched low by arsons looking for Rollie’s head.

They were nearing the end of rebuilding the bar, and Rollie finally felt like he could take a day and a night off. But instead of peace and quiet, what did he get? Another moron looking to cash in on a bounty. It seemed they would never stop seeking him out, would never learn. He guessed it was the indomitable human spirit at play—never believing you might not succeed. Until you don’t.

Rollie and Pops had laid low a sizable stack of men in the past few months. He figured he was about to add to that pile. On the other hand, it was as true that his luck would one day run out. Everybody’s did eventually. Was it this day?

Rollie tugged up his trousers as he eyed through plank gaps in the front wall beside the door. His attacker, so far he’d detected only the one, stood behind a wide ponderosa pine facing the outhouse. He looked out every few seconds, like a cuckoo clock. If he could time it right, he might be able to drill the bastard in the forehead.

“Oh, come on and answer me already. I saw you go in there. Heard tell there’s a bounty on your head, Finnegan!” A ratty beard parted and a cackle burst out between two chaw-dripping lips.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Now that’s more like it!”

“I asked where you heard that.”

“You saying it ain’t true?”

“No.”

“Well, I’ll oblige you. I heard it from a fella on the trail, oh, Utah or somewheres . . .”

Rollie groaned. He didn’t doubt the news was that widespread. What he didn’t like was that he was still the target of undeserving hate by people he’d never met or wronged. It seemed that half the folks who’d come after him for being a Pinkerton agent once upon a time were just in it for the money. At least the other misguided souls had what they believed was reason enough to attack him. They were folks—or their vengeance-seeking relations—he’d sent to prison for various misdeeds over the years.

What was this fool’s excuse? Had to be the money.

“Look. All I need’s your head. The rest of you can stay put.”

Rollie shook that wanted head. He had to give the man credit, at least he was forthright. Doesn’t mean I won’t kill him, though, thought Rollie. But first things first, I am pinned down in the outhouse and that cannot stand.

Getting out, he’d have to raise a ruckus, and no way was he exiting through the hole below. Kick out a side wall? He’d have to do it fast, because the man would reposition himself. It was a risk, especially if the crusty hick wasn’t alone.

Or . . . Rollie eyed the man again through the gap in the planks. Wait, wait . . . and there he was, peering around the tree once more. As quiet as he could, Rollie jimmied the tip of the Schofield’s barrel between the planks and eyed down the sights.

“Come on, man!” said the ambusher. “I ain’t got all day!”

“Hold on a second, I’m fixing my trousers—you caught me unawares . . .” That ought to buy time enough to watch the man give a couple more peeks around the tree. And he did.

Amazingly enough the rascal performed his funny little head maneuver as if he were timed. One more and . . . Rollie squeezed a shot. The rough red bark of the tree burst in a ragged cloud. The man’s screams told Rollie he’d not killed him, for a shot to the forehead would have snuffed any ability the man had to carry on so.

Within seconds the invader spun into view, holding his head and whipping in a dervish dance. He slammed into a knee-height granite boulder and flipped over it, collapsing on his back and flailing his legs.

By then Rollie had kicked open the privy door and stomped dead-on at the mewling man. The hot-nerved pulses always with him from too many old wounds prevented Rollie from a full-bore run.

He stood over him, though out of grabbing range, his revolver aimed down at the man’s head. As he suspected, given the man’s howls, his shot had blasted the tree and sent bark and jagged shards of wood into the man’s leering face. From between his grubby, bloody hands poured gore, bubbling about the mouth as the man screamed.

Rollie glanced quickly up at the tree the man had been hiding behind. It was a huge ponderosa and now sported a furrow of raw, honey-color wood chiseled up by the bullet into a ragged wound.

Rollie kicked him hard in the thigh. “Shut up.”

Another two kicks and it worked, the man’s noises tamped down to gasps and chesty sobs. “I . . . I can’t see! Oh God, I can’t see!”

“Take your hands away from your face, fool,” said Rollie.

When the man did, it revealed the reason.

“I can’t go through this life blind!”

“Aw, you won’t be blind for long.”

“Huh? You reckon? I don’t understand.”

Rollie shrugged. “Simple. You aimed to kill me. I figure that favor deserves one in kind.”

“You’re a devil! I heard about you . . . you’re a devil!”

Rollie nodded. “Yep, and next time you decide to dance with one, you best be prepared for things to go against you.”

“But . . . no!”

“Yep. Now, it’s your choice. I can string you up here or I can drag you back to Boar Gulch. I was planning on spending the day up here doing nothing much at all, but you’ve ruined that for me. Thank you very much.”

“What? What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”

“You were going to kill me, right?”

The blubbering man didn’t answer.

“Right?”

“Yeah, yes, I guess . . .”

“So it’s my turn.”

“No!” The man howled again and snatched up a slender-bladed skinning knife from a sheath at his waist. Before Rollie could figure out what the fool intended to do with it, the man had driven it once, twice into his own gut high, jamming the blade upward.

He got the two stabs in but lost steam. His hand, looking like a red-black glove of silk, trembled and released its shaky grip on the wood-handled knife. The hand dropped to the man’s side, but the knife remained lodged in his breadbasket. Blood pumped and welled, pumped and welled from the fresh wounds.

Rollie wasn’t certain the man had landed a heart wound, but he hadn’t done himself any good. They were mortal wounds, to be sure. Rollie scratched his chin and looked down at the gurgling mess at his feet.

He couldn’t recall ever seeing a man stab his own self to death. No, wait, there was that time in Alameda when he’d walked into that cabin to find that feral half-breed slicing on his own arms and legs for no earthly reason other than he’d been tetched. This fool didn’t have that excuse. Well, maybe a little.

Rollie didn’t like to all-but execute a man. This was rough. But the man was suffering mighty, his breathing was gaspy and ragged, blood bubbles rose and popped in succession up out of a mouth nested somewhere in the man’s soaked, gore-matted beard.

Rollie crouched low, his knees popping, and held the revolver at the man’s head, in case he decided to surprise them both and attack. Not likely, though.

“I’ll not shoot you to ease your passing, as you’ve done yourself in, mister. Your foolhardy ways are about over with. Any last words?”

“Da . . . da . . . devil!”

Rollie breathed deeply, pushed out the breath at about the same time the man’s skinny frame shuddered, then seemed to collapse in on itself. That final, momentous act was a mystery Rollie had witnessed many times but never understood. Maybe one day he’d find out, but not today.

“I expect you’ll meet the King of Devils himself, soon. Give ol’ Scratch my best.”

But the man would hear nothing ever again.

Rollie stood, knees popping once more, and looked around the clearing. Behind him, in the lean-to attached to the cabin, he heard Cap, short for Captain, his gray gelding, whicker.

“How in the hell did my day get off to such a start, Cap?” He turned to face the horse. “What next? What next for Rollie Finnegan?”

He heard no reply but a mountain jay and a far-off breeze through the tall trees. But something told Rollie he wouldn’t have long to wait to find out the answer to his question.

A day later found Rollie “Stoneface” Finnegan at his accustomed spot behind the bar in his own establishment, listening to his steadiest customer, Wolfbait. Rollie was majority stake holder of The Last Drop, the best, or so he liked to believe, of the two drinking establishments in the grubby little mine camp known as Boar Gulch.

“I had my doubts, I don’t mind saying.” The gimpy old miner with the tangled, chaw-stained beard shook his head and drained his beer glass.

“Okay, Wolfbait,” said Rollie to his old friend, crusty barfly and too-tough-to-die supply-run shotgun rider. “I give up—what did you have doubts about?”

Rollie didn’t really care what the old man thought at any time of the day or night. But he knew Wolfbait wouldn’t give up being annoying about it until he asked and at least feigned interest.

The famed ex-Pinkerton agent had threaded his way to the tiny but promising mountain town mere months before, in part to hole up and heal up after he was knifed and left for dead in an alley in Denver City. His intent on reaching Boar Gulch was to mine the miners while he convalesced.

What he ended up doing was buying what at the time was the town’s only saloon, taking on ex-slave, Jubal “Pops” Tennyson, as a partner, and doling out a whole lot of hard justice to the hordes of vengeance-seeking brutes from his past. These men and women felt his treatment of them from back in his Pinkerton days had been the cause of all their life’s woes, no matter the fact that they were all guilty of chicanery, deceit, treachery—and murder.

Once they found out Stoneface was still alive, they showed up with blood in mind, and were jerked to a halt at the end of a rope from Boar Gulch’s answer to lawmen—Stoneface and Pops. The pards agreed they had no use for the law, but justice, now that was something they could get behind.

“Doubts?” said Wolfbait. “Oh, yeah, well, look at this place.” He swept an old claw-tipped arm about himself at the newer, improved version of The Last Drop. “Never would have thought after those bums burned you fellas out that you’d rebuild, and in such grand fashion.”

Rollie had to admit that after the fire he had been tempted to pull up stakes and call it a day, hit the trail while he still had his life and a few dollars in his pocket. But the fire—in which they’d nearly lost their lives—had been a boon. Sure, they’d spent the past weeks holed up in a drafty tent, the front of which served as a makeshift saloon, but the new version of The Last Drop was taking shape nicely. It had space for more tables, a longer bar, and better storage and living quarters out back for him and Pops.

“I’ll admit, only this o. . .