The Lonesome Gun

Book 7: Perley Gates Western

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

Good Samaritan gunslinger Perley Gates returns for a new action-packed adventure from legendary national bestselling Western authors William W. Johnstone and J. A. Johnstone set in historic Texas.



Perley's elder brother, Rubin, who manages the Triple-G Ranch decides to try breeding some Hereford cattle with the ranch's longhorns. He asks Perley to deliver the contract for the Herefords, a simple task. But nothing ever remains simple when Perley is involved. And for the reluctant fast gun, it means a nightmare journey through hell itself . . .



The trouble starts when Perley and his sidekick, Possum, meet some damsels in distress—a lovely group of saloon girls with a broken wagon wheel. Being a good Samaritan, Perley feels honor-bound to help them. But when the travelers cross paths with an ornery gang of vicious outlaws, things turn deadly—and fast. It only gets worse from there, for Perley agrees to escort them to Nacogdoches—next to Angelina County, a section of which is infested with a special breed of vermin known as the Tarpley family. And this corrupt clan has a gunslinger—who'd love nothing more than to take down a living legend like Perley Gates . . .

Release date: July 25, 2023

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

“Becky, another hungry customer just walked in,” Lucy Tate said. “I’m getting some more coffee for my tables. Can you wait on him? He looks like trouble.” She looked at Beulah Walsh and winked, so Beulah knew she was up to some mischief.

“I was just fixing to wash up some more cups,” Becky said. “We’re about to run out of clean ones. Can he wait a minute?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy answered. “He looks like he’s the impatient kind. He might make a big scene if somebody doesn’t wait on him pretty quick.”

“I don’t want to make a customer mad,” Beulah said as she aimed a mischievous grin in Lucy’s direction. “Maybe I can go get him seated.”

“Oh my goodness, no,” Becky said. “I’ll go take care of him.” She was sure there was no reason why Lucy couldn’t have taken care of a new customer instead of leaving Beulah to do it. Beulah was busy enough as cook and owner. Becky dried her hands on a dishtowel and hurried out into the hotel dining room. Lucy and Beulah hurried right after her as far as the door, where they stopped to watch Becky’s reaction.

“Perley!” Becky exclaimed joyfully, and she ran to meet him. Surprised by her exuberance, he staggered a couple of steps when she locked her arms around his neck. “I thought you were never coming home,” she said. “You didn’t say you were gonna be gone so long.”

“I didn’t think I would be,” Perley said. “We were just supposed to deliver a small herd of horses to a ranch near Texarkana, but we ran into some things we hadn’t counted on, And that held us up, pretty much. I got back as quick as I could. Sonny Rice went with Possum and me, and he ain’t back yet.” She started to ask why, but he said, “I’ll tell you all about it, if you’ll get me something to eat.”

“Sit down, sweetie,” she said, “and I’ll go get you started.” He looked around quickly to see if anyone had heard what she called him, but it was too late. He saw Lucy and Beulah grinning at him from the kitchen door. Becky led him to a table right outside the kitchen door and sat him down while she went to get his coffee. “I was just washing up some cups when you came in. I must have known I needed a nice clean cup for someone special.”

He was both delighted and embarrassed over the attention she gave him. And he wanted to tell her he’d prefer that she didn’t do it in public, but he was afraid he might hurt her feelings if he did. Unfortunately, Lucy and Beulah were not the only witnesses to Becky’s show of affection for the man she had been not-so-secretly in love with for a couple of years. Finding it especially entertaining, two drifters on their way to Indian Territory across the Red River spoke up when Becky came back with Perley’s coffee.

“Hey, darlin’,” Rafer Samson called out, “bring that coffeepot out here. Sweetie ain’t the only one that wants coffee. You’d share some of that coffee, wouldn’t you, sweetie?”

“Dang, Rafer,” his partner joined in. “You’d best watch what you’re sayin’. Ol’ sweetie might not like you callin’ him that. He might send that waitress over here to take care of you.”

That was as far as they got before Lucy stepped in to put a stop to it. “Listen fellows, why don’t you give it a rest? Don’t you like the way I’ve been taking care of you? We’ve got a fresh pot of coffee brewing on the stove right now. I’ll make sure you get the first cups poured out of it, all right?”

“I swear,” Rafer said. “Does he always let you women do the talkin’ for him?”

“Listen, you two boneheads,” Lucy warned, “I’m trying to save you from going too far with what you might think is fun. Don’t force Perley Gates into something that you don’t wanna be any part of.”

“Ha!” Rafer barked. “Who’d you say? Pearly somethin’?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lucy said, realizing she shouldn’t have spoken Perley’s name. “You two look old enough to know how to behave. Don’t start any trouble. Just eat your dinner, and I’ll see that you get fresh coffee as soon as it’s ready.”

But Rafer was sure he had touched a sensitive spot the women in the dining room held for the mild-looking young man. “What did she call him, Deke? Pearly somethin’?”

“Sounded like she said Pearly Gates,” Deke answered. “I swear it did.”

“Pearly Gates!” Rafer blurted loud enough for everyone in the dining room to hear. “His mama named him Pearly Gates!”

Lucy made one more try. “All right, you’ve had your fun. He’s got an unusual name. How about dropping it now, outta respect for the rest of the folks eating their dinner in here?”

“To hell with the rest of the folks in here,” Rafe responded, seeming to take offense. “I’ll say what I damn well please. It ain’t up to you, nohow. If he don’t like it, he knows where I’m settin’.”

Lucy could see she was getting nowhere. “You keep it up, and you’re liable to find out a secret that only the folks in Paris, Texas, know. And you ain’t gonna like it.”

“Thanks for the warnin’, darlin’. I surely don’t want to learn his secret. Now go get us some more coffee.” As soon as she walked away, he called out, “Hey, tater, is your name Pearly Gates?”

Knowing he could ignore the two no longer, Perley answered. “That’s right,” he said. “I was named after my grandpa. Perley was his name. It sounds like the Pearly Gates up in heaven, but it ain’t spelt the same.”

“Well, you gotta be some kinda sweet little girlie-boy to walk around with a name like that,” Rafer declared. “Ain’t that right, Deke?”

“That’s right, Rafer,” Deke responded like a puppet. “A real man wouldn’t have a name like that.”

“I know you fellows are just havin’ a little fun with my name, but I’d appreciate it if you’d stop now. I don’t mind it all that much, but I think it upsets my fiancée.”

Perley’s request caused both his antagonists to pause for a moment. “It upsets his what?” Deke asked.

“I don’t know,” Rafer answered, “his fi-ant-cee, whatever that is. Maybe it’s a fancy French word for his behind. We upset his behind.” He turned to look at the few other customers in the dining room, none of whom would meet his eye. “We upset his fancy behind.”

“I’m sorry, Becky,” Perley said. “I sure didn’t mean to cause all this trouble. Tell Beulah I’ll leave, and they oughta calm down after I’m gone.”

Beulah was standing just inside the kitchen door, about ready to put an end to the disturbance, and she heard what Perley said. “You’ll do no such thing,” she told him. “Lucy shouldn’t have told ’em your name. You sit right there and let Becky get your dinner.” She walked out of the kitchen then and went to the table by the front door, where customers deposited their firearms while they ate. She picked up the two gun belts that Rafer and Deke had left there, took them outside, and dropped them on the steps. When she came back inside, she went directly to their table and informed them. “I’m gonna have to ask you to leave now, since your mamas didn’t teach you how to behave in public. I put your firearms outside the door. There won’t be any charge for what you ate if you get up and go right now.”

“The hell you say,” Rafer replied. “We’ll leave when we’re good and ready.”

“I can’t have you upsettin’ my other customers,” Beulah said. “So do us all the courtesy of leaving peacefully and, like I said, I won’t charge you nothin’ for what you ate.”

“You threw our guns out the door?” Deke responded in disbelief. He thought about what she said for only a brief moment, then grabbed his fork and started shoveling huge forkfuls of food in his mouth as fast as he could. He washed it all down with the remainder of his coffee, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and belched loudly. “Let’s go, Rafer.”

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere till I’m ready, and I ain’t ready right now,” Rafer said, and remained seated at the table. “If you’re through, go out there and get our guns offa them steps.”

“Lucy,” Beulah said, “step in the hotel lobby and tell David we need the sheriff.”

“Why, you ol’ witch!” Rafer spat. “I oughta give you somethin’ to call the sheriff about!” He stood up and pushed his chair back, knocking it over in the process.

That was as far as Perley could permit it to go. He got up and walked over to face Rafer. “You heard the lady,” he said. “This is her place of business, and she don’t want you and your friend in here. So why don’t you two just go on out like she said, and there won’t be any need to call the sheriff up here.”

Rafer looked at him in total disbelief. Then a sly smile spread slowly across his face. “Why don’t you go outside with me?”

“What for?” Perley asked, even though he knew full well the reason for the invitation.

“Oh, I don’t know. Just to see what happens, I reckon.” Finding a game that amused him now, he continued. “Do you wear a gun, Perley?”

“I’ve got a gun on the table with the others,” Perley answered. “I don’t wear it in here.”

“Are you fast with that gun?” When Perley reacted as if he didn’t understand, Rafer said, “When you draw it outta your holster, can you draw it real fast?” Because of Perley’s general air of innocence, Rafer assumed he was slow of wit as well.

“Yes,” Perley answered honestly, “but I would only do so in an emergency.”

“That’s good,” Rafer said, “because this is an emergency. You wanna know what the emergency is? When I step outside and strap my gun on, if you ain’t outside with me, I’m gonna come back inside and shoot this place to pieces. That’s the emergency. You see, I don’t cotton to nobody tellin’ me to get outta here.”

“All right,” Perley said. “I understand why you’re upset. I’ll come outside with you, and we’ll talk about this like reasonable men should.”

“Two minutes!” Rafer blurted. “Then if you ain’t outside, I’m comin’ in after you.” He walked out the door with Deke right behind him.

Becky rushed to Perley’s side as he went to the table to get his gun belt. “Perley, don’t go out there. You’re not going to let that monster draw you into a gunfight, are you?”

“I really hope not,” Perley told her. “I think maybe I can talk some sense into him and his friend. But I had to get him out of here. He was gettin’ too abusive. Don’t worry, I’ll be all right. He oughta be easier to talk to when he doesn’t have an audience.”

He strapped his Colt .44 on and walked outside to find Rafer and Deke waiting. Seeing the expressions of gleeful anticipation on both faces, Perley could not help a feeling of uncertainty. If he had looked behind him, he would have seen everyone in the dining room gathered at the two windows on that side of the building. Everyone, that is, except Becky and Beulah. All the spectators were confident of the unassuming young man’s gift of speed with a handgun. As far as Perley was concerned, his lightning-fast reactions were just that: a gift. He never practiced with a weapon, and he honestly had no idea why his brain and body reacted with no conscious direction from himself. Because of that, he was of the opinion that the talent could just as easily leave him with no warning. That was one reason he tried to avoid pistol duels whenever possible.

He took a deep breath and hoped for the best.

“I gotta admit, I had my doubts if you had the guts to walk out that door,” Rafer said when Perley came toward them. In an aside to Deke, he said, “If this sucker beats me, shoot him.” Deke nodded.

“Why do you wanna shoot me?” Perley asked him. “You’ve never seen me before today. I’ve done you no wrong. It doesn’t make any sense for you and me to try to kill each other.”

“The hell you ain’t done me no wrong,” Rafer responded. “You walked up to my table and told me to get outta there. I don’t take that from any man.”

“If you’re honest with yourself, you have to admit that you started all the trouble when you started makin’ fun of my name. I was willin’ to call that just some innocent fun, and I still am. So we could just forget this whole idea to shoot each other and get on with the things that matter—and that’s just to get along with strangers on a courteous basis. I’m willing to forget the whole trouble if you are. Whaddaya say? It’s not worth shootin’ somebody over.”

“I swear, the more I hear comin’ outta your mouth, the more I feel like I gotta puke. I think I’ll shoot you just like I’d shoot a dog that’s gone crazy. One thing I can’t stand is a man too yellow to stand up for himself. I’m gonna count to three, and you’d better be ready to draw your weapon when I say three, ’cause I’m gonna cut you down.”

“This doesn’t make any sense at all,” Perley said. “I don’t have any reason to kill you.”

“One!” Rafer counted.

“Don’t do this,” Perley pleaded, and turned to walk away.

“Two!” Rafer counted.

“I’m warnin’ you, don’t say three.”

“Three!” Rafer exclaimed defiantly. His six-gun was already halfway out when he said it—and he staggered backward from the impact of the bullet in his chest. Deke, shocked by Perley’s instant response, was a second slow in reacting and dropped his weapon when Perley’s second shot caught him in his right shoulder. He stood, helplessly waiting for Perley’s fatal shot, and almost sinking to his knees when Perley released the hammer and returned his pistol to his holster.

“There wasn’t any sense to that,” Perley said. “Your friend is dead because of that foolishness, and you better go see Bill Simmons about your shoulder. He’s the barber, but he also does some doctorin’. We ain’t got a doctor in town yet. You’d best just stand there for a minute, though, ’cause I see the sheriff runnin’ this way.”

Deke remained where he was, his eyes still glazed with the shock of seeing Rafer cut down so swiftly. Perley walked over and picked up Deke’s gun, broke the cylinder open, and extracted all the cartridges. Then he dropped it into Deke’s holster.

“Perley,” Paul McQueen called out as he approached. “What’s the trouble? Who’s that?” He asked, pointing to the body on the ground before giving Perley time to answer his first question.

“I think I heard his friend call him Rafer,” Perley said. “Is that right?” He asked Deke.

Deke nodded, then said, “Rafer Samson.”

“Rafer Samson,” McQueen repeated. “I’ll see if I’ve got any paper on him, but I expect you could save me the trouble,” he said to Deke. “What’s your name?”

“Deke Johnson,” he replied. “You ain’t got no paper on me. Me and Rafer was just passin’ through on the way to the Red.”

“I don’t expect I do,” McQueen said. “At least by that name, anyway. You were just passin’ through and figured you might as well cause a little trouble while you were at it, right?” He knew without having to ask that Perley didn’t cause the trouble. “How bad’s that shoulder?”

Deke nodded toward Perley. “He put a bullet in it.”

“You musta gone to a helluva lot of trouble to get him to do that,” the sheriff remarked. “Perley, you wanna file any charges on him?” Perley said that he did not. “All right,” McQueen continued. “I won’t lock you up, and we can go see Bill Simmons about that shoulder. Bill’s a barber, but he also does some doctorin’, and he’s our undertaker, too. He’s doctored a lotta gunshots, so he’ll fix you up so you can ride. Then I want you out of town. Is that understood?”

“Yessir,” Deke replied humbly.

“Perley, you gonna be in town a little while?” McQueen asked. When Perley said that he was, McQueen told him he’d like to hear the whole story of the incident. “I’ll tell Bill to send Bill Jr. to pick up Mr. Samson.” He looked around him as several spectators from down the street started coming to gawk at the body. “You mind stayin’ here a while to watch that body till Bill Jr. gets here with his cart?”

“Reckon not,” Perley said.

Bill Jr. responded pretty quickly, so it was only a few minutes before Perley saw him come out of the alley beside the barbershop, pushing his hand cart. Perley helped him lift Rafer’s body up onto the cart. “Sheriff said he called you out,” Bill Jr. said. “They don’t never learn, do they?” Perley wasn’t sure how to answer that, so he didn’t.

When he turned back toward the dining room again, Perley saw the folks inside still crowded up at the two small windows, and he thought maybe he’d just skip his dinner. But then he saw Becky standing in the open door, waiting for him to return. He truly hated that she’d seen the shooting. The incident she’d just witnessed was the kind of thing that happened to him quite frequently. There was no reason for it that he could explain. It was just something that had been attached to him at birth—the same as his natural reaction with a handgun, he supposed. He often wondered if when the Lord branded him with the cow-pie stigma, He thought it only fair to also grant him lightning-fast reactions. Perley had his brother John to thank for the saying, “If there wasn’t but one cow pie in the whole state of Texas, Perley would accidentally step in it.”

Becky broke into his fit of melancholy at that point when she became impatient and stepped outside the door. “Perley, come on in here and eat your dinner. It’s almost time to clean up the kitchen.” He reluctantly responded to her call.

Inside, he kept his eyes focused on the space between Becky’s shoulder blades, avoiding the open stares of the customers as he followed her to the table by the kitchen door. “Sit down, Becky said, “and I’ll fix you a plate.” She picked up his coffee cup. “I’ll dump this and get you some fresh.”

When he finally looked up from the table, it was to catch Edgar Welch’s gaze focused upon him. The postmaster nodded and calmly said, “Attaboy, Perley.” His remark caused a polite round of applause from most of the other tables. Instead of feeling heroic, Perley was mortified. He had just killed a man. It was certainly not his first, but it was something he was most definitely not proud of.

Becky returned from the kitchen with a heaping plate of food. She was followed by Beulah, coming to thank him for taking the trouble outside her dining room. “There ain’t no tellin’ how many of my customers mighta got shot if you hadn’t gone out there with him. He was gonna come back in here if you hadn’t. There certainly ain’t gonna be no charge for your dinner. Becky, take good care of him.”

“I will,” Becky said, and she sat down at the table with him. She watched him eat for a few minutes after Beulah went back into the kitchen before she asked a question. “Before all that trouble started, when you first came in, you said you came by to tell me something. Do you remember what it was?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “I came to tell you I’ve gotta take a little trip for a few days.”

“Perley,” she fussed, “you just got back from Texarkana. Where do you have to go now?”

“Rubin wants me to take a contract he signed down to a ranch somewhere south of Sulphur Springs. It’s for fifty head of Hereford cattle. Him and John have been talkin’ about crossbreedin’ ’em with our Texas longhorns to see if they can breed a better meat cow.”

“Why can’t one of them go?” Becky asked.

“John and Rubin both work pretty hard to run the cattle operation for the Triple-G. I never cared much for workin’ on the ranch, and there wasn’t anything tyin’ me down here till I found you. So I have always been the one to do things like takin’ this contract, and takin’ those horses to Texarkana.” He saw the look of disappointment on her face, so he was quick to say that there would surely be a change in his part of running the Triple-G after they were married. Judging by her expression, he wasn’t sure she believed him. Their discussion was interrupted at that point, when Paul McQueen walked in the dining room and came straight to their table.

“Mind if I sit down?” Paul asked.

“Not at all,” Becky answered him. “I’ve got to get up and help Lucy and Beulah. Can I get you a cup of coffee?” She knew he had been in earlier to eat dinner.

“Yes, ma’am, I could use a cup of coffee,” he said. When she left to fetch it, he said, “Bill’s workin’ on that fellow to get your bullet outta his shoulder. I asked him how it all happened, but I swear, he seemed to be confused about how it did happen. I asked him why he pulled his weapon, if it was just you and his partner in a shoot-out. He said he wasn’t sure why he pulled it. Said maybe he thought you might shoot him and damned if you didn’t. I don’t think he really knows what happened, but I can pretty much guess. Anyway, I don’t think you have to worry about him. I told him I wanted him outta town as soon as Bill’s finished with him, and I think he’s anxious to go. Bill Jr. was already back with the body before I left there.”

“If you’re wonderin’ about that business at all, you’ve got plenty of eyewitnesses,” Perley suggested. “Everybody you see sittin’ in here now was at those two windows up front. So they can tell you better than I can. I’m a little bit like the one I shot. It happened so fast, I ain’t sure I remember what happened.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Perley, I don’t doubt you handled it any other way than you are about everything, fair and square. I just wanted the whole picture in case the mayor asks me.”

McQueen didn’t have to wait long before he received the first eyewitness report. It came when Edgar Welch finished his dinner. Before leaving, he walked over to the table. “That was one helluva bit of shootin’ you done today, Perley. Sheriff, you shoulda seen it.” He then took them through the whole encounter. “Perley wasn’t even facing that devil when he drew on him, and he still beat him.”

“Maybe it ain’t such a good idea to tell too many people about it, Edgar,” McQueen said. “You might not be doin’ Perley or the town any favors if we talk about how fast he is with that six-gun of his. We might have the kind of men showin’ up in town that we don’t wanna attract, like them two today.”

“I see what you mean,” Edgar said. “And I agree with you. We might have more drifters like those two showing up in town. Point well taken. Well, I’ll be gettin’ back to the post office.”

The sheriff left soon after the postmaster, leaving Perley to finish up his dinner with a brief word here and there from Becky as she helped Lucy and Beulah clean up the dining room. He promised her that he would stay in town the entire day and eat supper there that night, before going back to the Triple-G. She gave him a key to her room on the first floor of the hotel, right behind the kitchen, so he could wait for her to finish her chores. She would have a couple of hours before it was time to prepare the dining room for supper. He was concerned about Buck, so he took the bay gelding to the stable so he could take his saddle off and turn him loose in Walt Carver’s corral.

He suspected that Possum was going to give him a goodly portion of grief for slipping out that morning without telling him where he was going. He was halfway serious when he wondered what he was going to do with Possum after he and Becky were married.

It was after two o’clock when Becky showed up at her room. They embraced briefly before she stepped away, apologizing for her sweaty condition, the result of having just cleaned the kitchen. She seemed strangely distant, he thought, not like her usual lighthearted cheerful self. “Maybe I ought to go on back to the ranch now,” he suggested, “and let you get a little bit of rest before you have to go back to the dining room.”

“I guess I’m just a little more tired than I thought,” she said. “But I don’t want to rush you off. I know you stayed in town because of me.” She didn’t want to tell him that the incident that took place right outside the dining room had made a tremendous impact upon her. She had sought the counsel of Beulah Walsh, the closest person to a mother she had. Her own mother had passed seven years ago, leaving her father a widower living alone in Tyler. While they had worked cleaning up the kitchen, Beulah, and Lucy, too, had tried to help her understand the man she had fallen in love with.

“The thing that happened in the dining room today is not that unusual in Perley’s life,” Beulah had told her. “His skill with a firearm is a curse that he has to live with,” she said. “To Perley’s credit, he tries to avoid it, but it always finds him sooner or later. And like you saw today, even his name is a curse and an open invitation to a troublemaker. So you have to be prepared for that day when Perley’s not the fastest gun.”

“I know how you feel, honey,” Lucy had suggested. “But why don’t you wait to see if he’s gonna be working full time at the ranch before you marry him? The way it is now, him and Possum are gone who knows where most of the time. You said he’s leaving tomorrow to go somewhere for a few days, and that ain’t good for a marriage. You don’t wanna spend your life wondering if your children’s daddy is coming home or not.”

Those words were still ringing in Becky’s mind as she tried to sort out her true feelings, and she could see the confusion in Perley’s eyes as they searched hers. This was the first time since she had met Perley that she wondered if she was about to make the wrong decision. In spite of her love for the man, she reluctantly decided that Lucy’s advice might be best. “Perley,” she finally managed to say, “you’re leaving tomorrow to take that contract for the cows. Why don’t we wait till you get back to talk about any plans we want to make? I must confess, that business today really got to me. And working in the kitchen afterward just seemed to drain all the energy I had. I hope you understand. I love you.”

He didn’t understand at all, but he said that he did. She seemed to be a Becky he had never met before. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “I’m gonna go now, so you can rest up before you have to go back to work tonight. We’ll talk about everything when I get back. I love you, too.” She stepped up to him and gave him another brief embrace, a fraction longer than the on. . .