The Man from Blood Gulch

Book 1: Man from Blood Gulch

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

In this blazing new series from the bestselling Johnstones, the sole survivor of a bloody massacre turns his rage to bounty hunting—and a new Western legend is born . . .

They call him Ghost. A hard man with a hard past, Garret “Ghost” McCoy will never forget the day his family was brutally attacked by vicious marauders. It forced him to grow up fast, get tough even faster, and sharpen every skill to survive—by gun, by knife, or by fist. A true loner and silent stalker, Ghost is the kind of no-nonsense bounty hunter who always gets his man. Dead or alive. But it’s only a matter of time before his reputation catches up with him—in a dusty dead-end town called Coyote Flats . . .

It starts with a killing. Three murderous cattle rustlers with a bounty on their heads reach the end of the line on the streets of Coyote Flats—where Ghost guns them down in a shootout. Impressed by the bounty hunter’s gun skills, the leader of a local outlaw gang makes Ghost an offer he can’t refuse. But Ghost refuses anyway. Which ticks off the outlaw—and draws the attention of another leader of another outlaw gang. Like it or not, Ghost is stuck in the middle of a gang war between two fierce rivals. But there’s something about the second gang that’s different. Something familiar . . .

They’re the marauders who killed Ghost’s family. And now they’re about to get Ghosted.

Release date: July 1, 2025

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

The Colt Peacemaker felt strange on his hip.

Not bad, just new. He’d carried the Colt Navy for years, and it was a hard thing to give up something that had worked so well for so long. The Peacemaker’s cartridge was bigger, and he liked that. He liked the way it bucked in his hand. Felt like power. But so far, he’d only shot tin cans and bottles with it.

Now it was time to shoot men.

The town of Black Oak was like any of a hundred others across Texas, and that meant there was at least one saloon. It was a hot summer day, and men would be piling into the place for a cold beer or a shot of whiskey.

The two outlaws on the saloon’s front porch looked smug and overconfident. Probably because of the rifleman in the window across the street. They’d heard he was coming for them, so they’d put a man in the window and thought it was their little secret.

But Garret McCoy had spotted him, in the hotel window, second floor all the way on the left. He’d always had good luck sniffing out men who were trying to kill him, a natural instinct honed by far more practice and experience than any man should see in a lifetime. He’d joined up with a bunch of other dumb, wide-eyed Kansas boys right after Fort Sumter. They’d show those Confederates a thing or two.

The bravado had faded fast at Wilson’s Creek.

Evan at the raw age of eighteen, it was plain that McCoy was good at war, could ride and fight and handle guns. By Elkhorn Tavern, he had three stripes on his arm, in no small part because most of the boys he’d joined with had gotten killed.

By the Wilderness, he’d been plucked from his regiment to join a special raiding unit. He learned to ride hard and strike fast, and he was even better with a pistol than with a rifle.

And then one day the war was over, and all McCoy had learned was how to kill.

He needn’t have worried, for the West always had a use for men with that exact skill. And some men were worth just as much dead as alive. McCoy didn’t relish killing, but he’d seen enough to get numb to it.

Not that he was eager for his own. He’d lived this long because he was smart and careful and patient. Patience was key. If he turned up at the front steps to the saloon porch right now to face the outlaws, it would put his back to the rifleman across the street. There was no rule that said he had to face the outlaws this very minute just because they were smirking at him. He wasn’t obliged to walk into their trap.

He turned abruptly to circle behind the saloon, catching the outlaws’ surprised look from the side of his eye.

When he was out of sight, he touched his guns to make sure they were still there. Of course they were, but it was a fidgety habit. Two fingers on the butt of the Peacemaker on his hip, then a thumb along the cool metal of the hammer on the Colt Navy in its new place, holstered under his stomach at the belt line. If he spent all the lead in the Peacemaker and still needed to shoot, he could drop it and draw the Navy crossways. It was a comfortable setup for him. He’d been too nostalgic for the Navy to give it up completely, and it was good to have the old friend ready as backup.

He entered the saloon through the back door, went down a short hall, taking it slow to give his eyes a chance to adjust. He emerged from the hallway into the front part of the saloon, a highly polished bar off to his right with an enormous oil painting on the wall behind it depicting a woman sprawled on a divan. She wasn’t exactly dressed for cold weather.

The place was crowded for an afternoon, folks swilling beers and tossing back shots of whiskey, lively conversation and a few hands of poker at scattered tables. McCoy went to the bar, flagged down a harried looking fella in a dirty apron, and asked for whiskey.

He stood there a while sipping from the glass, turning around to lean back against the bar and keep an eye on the front door. They’d get curious and come in soon enough.

What happened after that remained to be seen.

They entered the saloon sooner than he thought they would, stopping just inside the door, casting about, obviously trying to spot him. A second later, they did. One elbowed the other, and they traded whispers, and in the next moment took a table across the room, backs to the wall, both watching him while McCoy watched them right back.

McCoy could just about read their minds. He hadn’t stumbled into their obvious trap, and they were trying to figure what to do next. If they were smart, they’d mount up and get gone.

They were almost never smart.

The town’s sheriff—a fella named Bryson Tate—was pretty good about rounding up drunks on a Saturday night and keeping the peace in a general way, but when it came to outlaw killers, he hadn’t been much help. So that’s when a trio of anxious men from the town council had approached McCoy. If the law couldn’t rid the town of these men, then let a hired gun do it is what they figured. Tate simply didn’t have the grit for it, and furthermore, it was suspected he took bribes from the outlaws to look the other way.

McCoy had put that to the test, letting it leak to Tate he would be headed to the saloon soon to take the outlaws dead or alive. Sure enough, word got to the outlaws, and it could only have been Tate who’d tipped them off.

Now McCoy’s plan was to wait them out. They’d get impatient and make a mistake. Or the rifleman across the street would get impatient and come over to see what was going on, and then McCoy would have all three of them together. Not ideal, but better than having a sniper across the street taking potshots at him.

“Dirty” Dave Dunbar and Shane “Snake” Delany weren’t the most ruthless killers McCoy had ever hunted, but they weren’t model citizens by any measurement. Delany got the nickname “Snake” because he had a tattoo of a sidewinder down his shooting arm and told everyone who’d listen he was as fast on the draw as a striking snake. Dunbar was called “Dirty” because . . . well, McCoy didn’t know. Maybe the man didn’t bathe.

By process of elimination, that meant the man across the street with the rifle must have been Larry Prince, who evidently didn’t feel the need to bother with a nickname. Maybe he felt being called Prince was enough.

The saloon doors swung inward as a newcomer entered, a man hunched over in a long, gray cloak, head down and hat pulled low. There was nothing remarkable about him except the way he walked, a slow, deliberate gait like he was weary but determined, or drunk but pretending to be sober. Nobody took much notice of him, but McCoy watched the man with curiosity as he shambled across the saloon.

When the stranger drew even with the table where Dunbar and Delany sat, he suddenly threw off his cloak, stood straight, and drew a pair of gleaming, nickel-plated Peacemakers, leveling one at each outlaw.

“Don’t move,” the stranger said. “Get them hands on the table.”

The outlaws complied, everyone in the saloon turning to get a load of what was happening.

McCoy realized he knew the man.

Bob Baily was another bounty hunter. He and McCoy had crossed paths before, which often happened when two hunters trailed the same prey. He wore a blue, bib-front shirt, and black pants with yellow stripes down the sides. A bushy mustache that drooped down each side of his wide mouth.

“I like your new Peacemakers, Bob,” McCoy said. “Real flashy.”

Bob’s eyes flashed to McCoy quickly, then back to the outlaws. “That you, Garret?”

“It’s me.”

“Ain’t seen you since Wichita.”

McCoy shrugged. “I been around.”

“Well, I reckon I know why you’re here, and I’m just telling you to stand back,” Bob told him. “I got the drop on these boys fair and square. You wanted them, you should’ve made a move sooner. My play, my reward.”

“I guess that’s about right,” McCoy agreed.

“Okay then.” Bob waved his six-shooters at the two outlaws. “You two get up and head out that front door and no funny business. I like to take my prisoners in alive, unlike some folks I could mention, but we can do it dead if that’s how you want it.”

Dunbar and Delany stood slowly, hands in the air, and moved toward the front door, Bob following.

McCoy cleared his throat. “I need to warn you, Bob—”

“Warn me what?” Bob shot back. “You going to take my prisoners from me? You just stay at the bar and enjoy your drink and keep your hand away from that shooter on your hip.”

“Dang it, Bob, you need to listen to me for your own good.”

“You don’t give me orders, so don’t get all tough with me, Ghost McCoy.” Bob licked his lips nervously.

McCoy’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t much fancy that nickname.”

“Never mind that,” Bob said. “You just mind your business, and I’ll mind mine.”

The outlaws left the saloon, and Bob Baily followed.

The unmistakable crack of a rifle shot split the air.

Bob flew back into the saloon, hat spinning away, fancy shooting irons drooping from his hands. He landed hard with a wham on the rough floorboards. Blood dripped down one side of his nose from a neat hole in the center of his forehead.

Yells, panic, curiosity, excitement, fear, all mixed together from everyone in the saloon, some standing to get a better look at the show, others diving under tables for cover.

McCoy was already moving sideways from the bar, his Peacemaker flashing into his hand. Snake Delany burst back through the swinging saloon doors first, Colt Walker in his hand, blazing away where McCoy had been standing at the bar a split second ago, whiskey bottles exploding in a rain of glass and amber liquid.

McCoy fanned the hammer of his Peacemaker twice, catching Snake in the chest and knocking him back into Dirty Dave, who was trying to enter. Both men went down in a heap.

Dirty Dave recovered quickly, coming up to one knee and lifting his pistol, but he wasn’t fast enough.

McCoy fired.

The shot caught Dirty Dave in the throat, and he dropped his pistol and flopped over, making a heartbreaking gurgling sound.

McCoy rushed to the front door but stood off to the side, trying to peek around the corner into the street without exposing himself to the rifleman. He took a couple of quick looks. The hotel window across the street was empty, but that didn’t mean much. The shooter could have been hiding off to the side of the window just as McCoy was doing, waiting for his chance to shoot again.

Dirty Dave hadn’t finished dying yet. He squirmed on the ground, kicking and twitching, both hands at his throat, blood seeping wet and red between his fingers.

McCoy took a longer look this time, but he didn’t see anyone in the hotel windows, and nobody took a shot at him.

Dirty Dave stopped twitching.

McCoy heard a horse whinny, then galloping hooves. He went out the front door, stepping over the corpses of the two outlaws, and saw Larry Prince riding out of town as if the devil himself was on his tail.

McCoy put two fingers in his mouth and whistled sharp and shrill.

A boy came around the corner leading McCoy’s horse by the reins. The animal was a huge black mare. A good bit of horse flesh. The boy was a young Mexican, maybe fifteen, bucktoothed. Dark eyes. He handed McCoy the reins.

“Stayed out of sight until you whistled,” the boy said. “Just like you told me.”

“Good man.” McCoy dipped into his vest pocket and came out with a coin. He flipped it to the boy.

McCoy mounted his horse and frowned as he saw Sheriff Tate huffing and puffing toward him, face red.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Tate demanded. “You can’t just shoot up my town and ride off.”

“I didn’t start the shooting. I finished it.” McCoy pointed at the two bodies in front of the saloon. “Those are my kills, you hear? I’m coming back for my money.”

Tate frowned and snarled but didn’t contradict him. He didn’t have his outlaws backing him up anymore.

“You’ll get your bounty,” Tate said. “Nobody here’s going to cheat you.”

“Not if they know what’s good for ’em, they won’t.”

McCoy clicked his tongue, and the big black horse took off like a shot after Larry Prince.

Larry Prince fled across Texas.

And Garret “Ghost” McCoy pursued.

His big black mare was a strong animal, and McCoy slowly gained on the outlaw. Prince surely knew the situation and would have to decide if and when he’d turn and fight. Or maybe he was trying to make it to some hideout where he could hole up. Or maybe Prince was hoping to stay ahead of McCoy just long enough for nightfall, and maybe the outlaw would try to lose McCoy in the darkness.

They came to a river, wide and shallow, and McCoy reined in the horse at the bank. He’d watched as Prince had easily forded the river and rode on. McCoy recognized this area, the dry grassland and scattered copses of scrub oak. If he crossed the river and kept heading south, he’d get to a place he hadn’t been to since he was a boy, a place he swore he’d never visit again. If that’s where Prince was going, then McCoy was forced to wonder if he really wanted the reward for the outlaw that badly.

McCoy dithered a moment, considering. It had already been a good payday. He could turn back and collect on the corpses of Snake and Dirty Dave. There was no desperate reason to chase after Prince . . . except, of course, that McCoy never liked that feeling of leaving something unfinished.

He was just about to turn back when he saw Prince veer east, following the lazy path of the river.

McCoy thought about it another moment and then spurred his horse forward, splashing through the river to the other side. Prince’s changing directions had decided him. Garret would see the job finished one way or another, bringing Prince back dead or alive.

But in the time it took McCoy to decide, Prince had stretched his head start. He didn’t want to lose the outlaw in the darkness and would need to ride hard to catch up before nightfall. He spurred his horse to a full gallop.

Soon dusk began gathering around him, and not long after that the sunset plunged him into night. He eased his horse back to a trot. If the animal put a hoof wrong or stepped in a gopher hole, she could break a leg, and then McCoy would be stuck walking. He mumbled a curse at himself for letting this situation develop. In the darkness, Prince could veer off in any direction, even cross the river to the other side again or—

Something caught his attention ahead. Twinkling lights. A village or a small town.

McCoy slowed the horse to a walk and headed for the lights. If he was guessing wrong, if Prince had doubled back, then McCoy had lost the man and that was all she wrote.

But if the town ahead was Prince’s destination all along, then McCoy would sniff him out.

A half hour later, McCoy found himself walking down the town’s main street, one and two story buildings rising up on either side. The town wasn’t much. It went another street or two to either side of him, and he could see the end of the street and more Texas beyond, a hundred yards down, maybe more. He passed a livery stable and a few shops. The first place with lights on in the windows was a saloon with rooms upstairs, a typical setup from the look of it. He dismounted and looped the horse’s reins over the hitching post and paused to listen before going inside. Talk, laughter, the clink of glasses. Nothing out of the ordinary.

He looked up and read the sign over the door. The Thirsty Coyote.

McCoy went inside.

Men playing cards, drinking at the bar, saloon gals batting eyelashes in an attempt to drum up business. An upright piano against one wall and nobody playing it. A big mirror behind the bar that nobody had washed since the Millard Fillmore administration.

All eyes were on McCoy as he crossed the room to the bar, but in the next moment, everyone had gone back to their business. The bar was manned by a nervous-looking little bald man with a sweaty face. He came over to stand in front of McCoy, eyebrows raised into a question.

“Whiskey,” McCoy said.

The bartender’s eyes shifted to the left.

Three men down the bar turned to face McCoy, none of them looking much like church folk. The two in back looked like typical bruisers, broad shoulders, scowling faces, six-guns on their hips. McCoy couldn’t decide if the one in front looked better or worse.

He leaned against the bar, a smirk coming easy to his face, a black vest over a purple shirt. Black hat with a band of worked, silver discs. More silver on his gun belt, big buckle. Black pants and boots that looked like they might be snakeskin. Angular face, clean shaved. Dark, glittering eyes like polished river stones.

“This is a private club, friend,” purple shirt said.

Nobody had his hand near his gun, but the tension was there. McCoy kept things polite.

He shrugged. “Beg pardon. I didn’t know. Looked like any other saloon. I’m looking for a man named Larry Prince, who maybe just rode into town. If you happen to know where he might be, I’ll be on my way.”

“You the law?” purple shirt asked.

McCoy noticed the room had gone silent, everyone especially interested in the answer to this last question.

“I don’t carry a badge, if that’s what you’re asking,” McCoy said.

Purple shirt snorted. “That’s a funny way to answer a yes or no question. I’m thinking that’s a bounty hunter answer.”

“Let’s just say I’m interested in Prince.” McCoy looked around the room at everyone watching him. “And nobody else. That ease your mind?”

“My mind don’t need to be eased,” purple shirt said. “Because, like I said, this is a private club, and you’re going to be leaving now. You can find the door, or I can show it to you if you’d prefer—”

Someone cleared his throat. Loudly.

All eyes turned to the man sitting at the corner table. McCoy took a long look at him. The man in the corner looked part slicker, part two-bit politician, and part riverboat gambler. A new blue suit with a garish paisley waistcoat. Rings on his fingers. Dark hair slicked back. And a well-trimmed mustache. A long, thin cigar smoldered in the corner of his mouth.

“Now, Gerald, let’s show some hospitality,” said the man in the corner. “We don’t get a lot of visitors here in Coyote Flats. This gentleman might go away with the impression we’re not friendly, and give the town a bad name.”

Purple shirt straightened up. Apparently, this was Gerald. “You’re the boss, Mr. Jericho.”

“So you’re looking for Larry Prince,” said the one called Jericho. “I thought my eyes had deceived me when I saw him riding through town earlier. Seems he’s back. I can’t say that pleases me, no, not at all.”

“If his presence offends you, I happen to be in a position to rectify that situation,” McCoy said.

“Is he still running around with those two lowlifes, Snake and Dirty Dave?” Jericho asked.

“Them two fellas won’t be running around with anyone ever again.”

A devilish smile quirked to Jericho’s lips. “Yes, I see. Hmmmm. Tempting, yes, very tempting indeed. It’s decided then. I want to see this.”

Jericho stood and pulled on a pair of black leather gloves. He plopped a bowler hat on his head and grabbed a walking stick topped with a silver ram’s head. “What is your name, sir?”

“Garret McCoy.”

“Walk with me, Mr. McCoy. I daresay I have a fair guess where Mr. Prince might be keeping himself.”

They left the saloon and walked toward the other end of town. McCoy glanced back and saw Gerald and his two sidekicks following at a respectful distance.

“Where are we going?” McCoy asked.

“To see . . . ah, how shall I put it?” Jericho wondered out loud. “To see a business rival. Yes, that’s a civilized way to put it.” As they walked—more of a stroll really, as if Jericho was simply out to take the night air—Jericho gestured to a two-story building off to his right. “That’s Carmen’s Place, sort of neutral ground here in Coyote Flats. If you still want that drink of whiskey later, then that would be your best bet.”

McCoy could hear music and laughter emanating from within as they passed.

They reached the other side of town, not a long walk—and Jericho led him to a squat-looking adobe building with a red tile roof.

Jericho paused and looked back at Gerald. “Best if you and the boys wait here, Gerald. If you hear anything untoward, you can come rushing to the rescue.”

Gerald touched the brim of his hat. “Anything you say, Mr. Jericho.”

“Come, Mr. McCoy,” Jericho said. “Into the lion’s den.”

They entered.

The ceiling was low, the lighting dim, the atmosphere smoky with tobacco. Dour men hunched over their drinks at a half-dozen tables. They all looked up as McCoy and Jericho entered, their demeanor hostile and unwelcoming.

Jericho leaned toward McCoy and said in a low voice, “Not a cheerful sort of place, is it? You’ll find the company is more of the same.”

A big man stood up from one of the tables in back, thinning black hair on his melon head, ruddy cheeks, huge, bushy mustache curled and oiled at the ends. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing massive forearms covered with rough hair.

“I think you might be in the wrong place, Jericho.”

Jericho smiled warmly. “Big Mike, you are a sight for sore eyes. Don’t alarm yourself. I’m here on business. Fetch Mortimer, would you?”

Mike narrowed his eyes. “I don’t fetch. But I’m sure Mr. Lorenzo will be curious why you’ve decided to pay a visit. Wait here.”

Big Mike vanished into the back room.

McCoy stood still and let his eyeballs roam the room. Like in the Thirsty Coyote, these men were all hard types, the difference being those here seemed entirely bereft of good humor. When Big Mike had left to find this Lorenzo character, they hadn’t gone back to their own conversations. They simply sat and stared at McCoy and Jericho, faces dour, eyes piercing, as if willing the two interlopers to try something.

Jericho seemed perfectly at ease. But McCoy kept one thumb hooked into his belt, not quite threatening but very ready.

Big Mike returned a moment later with another man in tow. He was as tall as Big Mike, but with lean, sharp features, nose and cheekbones with a beard carefully trimmed to a point at the tip of his chin, gray at the corners of his mouth. More gray streaked through the black hair at each temple.

McCoy assumed this was Lorenzo.

Lorenzo looked from Jericho to McCoy. There was something odd about his gaze, almost as if he was looking right at you, but pretending not to. McCoy found it off-putting.

“Something you want from me, dandy?” Lorenzo asked Jericho.

Jericho’s smile didn’t touch his eyes. “Such hospitality. I understand Larry Prince has returned to Coyote Flats.”

Lorenzo frowned. “What makes you say that?”

“A little birdy told me,” Jericho said. “Now, you do understand that as part of our little agreement, Prince was supposed to get lost and never come back. I’m sure you remember. We are still honoring the truce, aren’t we?”

Lorenzo shrugged. “That depends. Another part of the truce is you don’t bring your hired guns into my place. Or do I misremember?”

“Not at all.” Jericho gestured to McCoy. “This gentleman is not in my employ. He’s the one looking for Prince.”

Lorenzo’s odd gaze shifted to McCoy. “Oh? And why should I care about that?”

“Whether or not. . .