The Wicked and the Dead

Book 1: Wicked and the Dead

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Westerns; Mystery; Action & Adventure Romance

Synopsis

JOHNSTONE COUNTRY.

WHERE BOOT HILL IS FULL OF MEN WHO PULLED THEIR TRIGGERS WITHOUT AIMING.

As hardworking families and ambitious dreamers set down roots across the American West, others swooped down to prey upon them. And after the smoke cleared, those who lived by the gun found themselves facing justice—and vengeance . . .

It was supposed to be a simple robbery. A fortune in gold for the taking. What Hack Long and his outlaws hadn’t figured on was the Texas Rangers pouncing on them like a pack of rabid wolves. Desperate to escape, Long led his men south of the Rio Grande where they ran afoul of Mexican Rurales and were imprisoned.

Unwilling to die behind the bars of the hellish prison where life is worth less than a peso, Long’s band of desperadoes break out of jail and split up to escape. Now, Two-Horses, Luke Fischer, Gabriel Santana, Billy Lightning, and Long are scrabbling along a desolate landscape, heading for Texas to reclaim their ill-gotten gains, hunted by dogged lawmen, merciless Comaches, and a violent gang of bandits who also want the stolen gold.

Though they be thieves and outlaws, Long and his men aren’t nearly as deadly as their pursuers. They may not deserve forgiveness for their sins, but only death passes judgment on both the good and the bad. . .

Live Free. Read Hard.

Release date: March 26, 2024

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 368

Sample

The bare prison courtyard deep in Coahuila, Mexico, was hot as Hell’s foyer, and Hack Long would have given anything to be somewhere cooler. Dirt and rocks packed by decades of hooves and human feet reflected the desert sun’s rays back against the brick, rock, and adobe buildings, making the enclosure feel like a massive oven.

He sat on the ground in a sliver of shade with his back to the rough exterior wall, chewing at a tough piece of meat that could have come from a cow, bear, horse, donkey, or wolf. Dog, for all he and the others knew. He’d eaten plenty of dog in Two-Horses’ village over the past few years, when they were in the Indian Nations.

It didn’t matter. The plain, familiar stew was nourishment, and they all needed to keep up their strength for the next struggle to survive that was sure to come. Bland food was strange down in Mexico, because the smell of onions, peppers, and spices that wafted from the comandante’s office and the adjoining guards’ barracks made their stomachs rumble several times a day.

He and the boys figured the grub they brought to them was boiled up well before anything else was added, other than the salt needed for the prisoners to survive, providing another form of punishment for all those locked up in that hellhole. Only on Sundays were their tortillas and beans flavored with nopales and chilis so hot they seemed to be an added punishment instead of a treat.

Hack and the hard-eye boys with him ate every bite of whatever the Mexicans dished out and were proud to get it. They had to stay strong, because only the fit could survive in a world of bandits, murderers, and thieves.

There were two kinds of men in Purgatorio. Predators and prey. Sometimes, Hack was of the mind that only the wicked survived, while the dead were finally released from the tribulations that delivered them to dry graves outside the penitentiary with startling regularity.

The Long Gang, as they were known both inside and outside of the prison, had long ago proved capable of protecting themselves, but it was essential they continued to project a sense of menace worse than what they’d been dragged into.

That made them harder men than when they had stumbled through the gates of the Mexican prison in chains. None of them were without scars, and over half of those they shared were earned in attacks and fights that usually resulted in the deaths of the instigators.

Every day, they had only fifteen minutes to eat before going back to the copper mines, though it always seemed much shorter. On that day, Luke Fischer lowered himself to the hard ground beside the gang leader and adjusted his position to keep an eye on the other prisoners. “You feel it?”

“I do.” Jaws aching, Hack shifted the tough piece of meat to the other cheek and chewed some more.

One of the newer inmates, a man with a wispy mustache, passed the American prisoners, looking with dead eyes for a safe place to eat from those wolves who stole food. Swift attacks to take the weaker men’s twice-a-day allotment usually spilled more than they gained. The slender young man named Escobedo had only been there for a week, and in those few days, he’d lost half of his portions as well as his shoes.

Eyes glassy with hunger, work, and fear, he sat only a dozen feet from the Norte Americanos and wolfed down his meal. Two fresh cuts from an altercation the night before marred the smooth skin over one eyebrow and on the opposite cheekbone.

Andelacio Morales rose from where he squatted with a clot of other prisoners near the long row of cells and swaggered across the bare yard. Hack couldn’t stand that man because he stunk so bad. That’s part of why he and the boys steered clear of him whenever possible.

He was also the worst, most blackhearted human being Hack had ever seen. Morales’s worn-out shoes crunched on the hard-packed gravel. Even the hot air stilled as the man towered over Escobedo, who kept his eyes lowered to the tin plate between his knees. Escobedo seemed to collapse inward as his spirit vanished. Hack sensed that he wished to sink into the ground.

Morales towered over Escobedo and spoke to him in Mexican. “Your portion.”

The younger man quickly tilted the bowl to his mouth and swallowed without chewing. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and Hack wondered how he got any of that gristle down without chewing.

Morales’s face twisted. “The rest of that’s mine.”

Like a child, Escobedo twisted sideways to protect the bowl until he could get the last mouthful.

For the past several months, the Long Gang had stayed out of the trouble that swirled around them like a chiindii, the Navajo word for a dust devil. That’s what those little fights in the yard reminded him of, the skinny twisters of sand that walked across the desert floor. Those kinds of fights were as common in Purgatorio as breathing.

Knowing what was coming next, Hack put down his empty bowl and rose, using only the muscles in his stout legs. The corners of his eyes tightened, and he wondered why he was getting involved in someone else’s business.

It didn’t matter. That familiar tingle in his head rose with a hum. There are some things in this world the wanted outlaw wouldn’t tolerate, and one of them was people who preyed on other, weaker men. The red tinge at the edges of his vision would soon narrow down to a tunnel with only Morales at the end. It had happened more times than Hack or his best friend, Luke, cared to admit.

He shifted over to make Morales see a fresh target rather than his young victim. “Go away and leave him alone.”

The hulk of a man didn’t take his eyes off Escobedo and the tiny bit of food left in the wooden bowl. “I’m not talking to you, gringo.”

Across the yard, Juan Perez perked up. From the corner of his eye, Hack saw the head guard grin at the incident boiling to life in the hot sun. That evil man liked nothing better than watching a good beating, and he didn’t give a whit about who was on the wrong end.

When Hack was a young man, his old daddy had always said to get the first lick in on a fight and to use anything that came to hand. The only things Hack had nearby now were his fists, and Morales was hard as the packed ground under their worn-out old boots.

“But I’m talking to you, estupido.” Hack’s right fist shot out in a blur and landed squarely against Morales’s jaw, spinning him to the side. A hard left landed on the point of his nose, which exploded in a gout of blood that gushed from both nostrils. The cartilage crunched under Hack’s large knuckles, and the man’s expression went dull.

Morales staggered backward before regaining his balance. Pursuing his advantage, Hack followed up with two more swings that immediately split the skin over Morales’s eyebrow and split his cheek. The stunned man blinked several times to clear his watering eyes. Half a dozen of his compadres gathered behind him like regimental troops, as if preparing for a charge, shouting and urging him on.

Still behind Hack, Luke Fischer barked a laugh and rose to square off with the others. Using his fingers to comb back a tuft of brown hair from his forehead, he set his feet in case somebody charged. “Darn, son. I think I just saw water shoot out of six holes in his head.”

The other members of the incarcerated Long Gang heard Luke chuckle. Two-Horses, Gabriel Santana, and Billy Lightning put their bowls on the ground and stood as one. The boys drifted behind Hack and scattered out. Had the members of the Long Gang been armed, that action would have had the makings of a shootout, with deadly results. They were all experienced gunmen and had done their share of killing both good and bad men.

Instead, they faced Morales’s lackeys and prepared to fight.

Morales was an experienced prison brawler, and a couple of hard licks and a little blood didn’t faze him all that much. A large man, he’d survived innumerable fights by using his weight and power. He shouted and rushed in to get his hands on Hack, where he could use his considerable prison experience gained from years of preying on weaker men.

Hack was far from weak and had no intention of letting that happen. Planting his right boot, he cocked his arm as if ready to swing. The instant Morales ducked his head to plow a shoulder into his chest, Hack settled back to use his own motion against him.

As a former town marshal, train and bank robber, and range rider who’d fought his way across most of Texas, bustin’ knuckles with someone else was nothing new to the gang leader. He’d learned long ago to let a man use his own leverage against himself and almost felt comfortable with what was about to happen.

When Morales charged, Hack swiveled and dodged, at the same time grabbing the inmate’s arm, and he used the man’s momentum to swing him headfirst into the prison wall. The convict’s skull and shoulder hit the solid rock and brick with a crack. The impact stopped the man’s charge, and his knees buckled.

Morales went down for a second, but using the wall to steady himself, he regained his feet and pushed off with both hands, addled for a second time in fifteen seconds. He shook his head to clear it and blood flew. Gritting his teeth, he growled like a furious coyote and rushed at Hack.

Those friends of his were moving in, and Hack had to finish up fast. Only men who lost their tempers wanted to continue a fight just to maim and hurt. He wanted that mad dog down for good in the eyes of those who saw him as their leader, so he wouldn’t have to look over his shoulder every day for the rest of the time they were there.

Morales shook his head a second time to clear the cobwebs, and droplets of blood flew like rain once again, splashing on those nearby. His face was a mask of blood that poured from his nose and a gaping split in his forehead wide enough to look like a second mouth. The edges separated enough to show his white skull, which was soon covered in red.

Hack reluctantly gave him one thing, the Mexican prisoner was tough as a horseshoe nail and had no intention of stopping. He came in again, and Hack swung a soft left that the inmate easily blocked, but it left him open, and an uppercut that started at Hack’s rope belt and aimed at the top of Morales’s head finished the fight. His teeth clacked from the impact that shattered his jaw, and he dropped in his tracks like a puppet with the strings cut. He hit the ground blowing bloody bubbles mixed with broken teeth.

Breathing hard, Hack faced Morales’s friends and squared off with them. “This’ll be the rest of you if y’all take one more step. This is over.” He pointed at Escobedo. “And you leave this man alone.”

Still making eye contact to maintain their machismo, Morales’s men drifted off like leaves in the wind, leaving Morales unconscious in the dust. Hack’s boys stayed planted where they were in case someone whirled to charge. When all the inmates were back to their places in the shade, they relaxed and went back to their own small pieces of ground.

Escobedo nodded his thanks and pushed his back closer to the rock and mortar wall, as if ensuring no one could get in behind him. He tipped the bowl into his mouth and finished the food Hack had fought for.

Hack licked his thumb and rubbed at the now raw knuckles on his left hand. With all the roosterin’ between them over with for the time being, he picked up his own wooden bowl and returned to his previous spot in the shade to suck in another mouthful of the now-cold stew.

The shirt hanging on his thick shoulders wasn’t much more than a thin rag, but a new rip in the back that ran from shoulder to waist parted when he sat. “It’s a good thing this storm is coming.” He picked up the conversation with Luke as if they’d never been interrupted. “They won’t make us work for a day or two while it passes through, and Escobedo there can rest up.”

Luke scratched at his brown whiskers. “I’m surprised you stood up for that feller.”

Hack chewed for a moment longer and nodded at Escobedo, who watched his tormentor’s lackeys haul the unconscious man off. “He’ll make it now, maybe. Did you hear what happened in his cell last night?”

Luke swallowed the last of his meal. “Escobedo’s tougher’n you think. He whipped Torres one-on-one.”

Two-Horses stood in the sun, picking at a callus on his thumb. His face was wide, jaw solid, with prominent, protruding cheekbones. It was his White man’s blue eyes that set him apart from his Comanche roots. Round in shape and always narrowed against the light, they spoke of mixed blood that almost no one, white or red, could abide.

He seldom spoke, but he seemed surprised Hack had waded into a fight that didn’t have anything to do with any of them. “So why’d you help him?”

“Because what they did wasn’t right. Torres paid one of the guards, and I figure it was Perez, to open Escobedo’s cell after lockup. Torres slipped in, and about five minutes later they had to carry what was left of him out. They locked the cell again, and nobody said a word. That’s why I think Escobedo can handle himself, but two fights so close together can drain a man down to nothing.

“The truth is, I don’t like it that Perez is playing games with everyone in here. Next time it could be me or you or any one of us who’s not up to snuff at the moment and can’t defend themselves.”

“Why did he let Torres into Escobedo’s cell in the first place?” Gabe Santana wanted to know. Besides Luke, Gabe had been with Hack longer than the others. A lithe, slender man with black hair, olive complexion, and somber eyes, he’d been a man to ride the river with from the first time Hack laid eyes on him up in Llano County.

“Because I heard there was a bet over who would win.”

The youngest of their group, Billy Lightning, scratched at a red spot on his forearm where a scorpion had stung him a week earlier. Looking more like a schoolboy, Billy had only a few light whiskers along his jawline and a dusting of blond strands on his upper lip. “Torres woke up in the hotbox this morning. He’s still in there as far as I know.”

“I knew a guy who spent three days in the Yuma hotbox,” Luke interjected. “Killed him deader’n Dick’s hatband. Fell out about five minutes after they let open the door. It was a crying shame for a tough man like that.”

“I bet Torres wishes he’d never tangled with Escobedo.” Santana stretched his legs in the dry sunshine, studying what was left of his worn-out boots.

Billy used his thumb to rub at the knot left by what he’d grown up calling a stinging lizard, which was a local description of scorpions. “You could have let Escobedo handle himself. Now you’ll have Perez thinking about you and what he can do to us.”

“Don’t matter. I dislike Morales, and now that’s settled,” Hack answered. “Sometimes you have to refresh folks’ memories, too.”

Taking advantage of the time out of their cells and the mine, Hack adjusted himself in the narrow shade thrown by the twelve-foot wall to keep the sun off his head. The guards allowed each man a cap, of sorts, but it fit so snug, the hot material made Hack’s skull feel like it was baking all day. He’d often thought he’d give anything for one of the tall sombreros worn by the locals that provided a cushion of air on top and a wide brim to shade a man’s face and shoulders.

Shoot, he’d even settle for one of the military-style caps with the leather bills the guards wore. They were a by-product of the French influence there in Mexico, but Hack really wanted a good, soft felt Stetson like he’d worn across the river. All Texans love their hats, horses, and depending on the man, their dogs or women.

Only one prisoner had a hat of any sort, and that was Torres, but it would go into the grave with him if the hotbox took his life. The guards took what they wanted when a man died, and the rest was either distributed to the peasants in the nearby community, or buried.

As the boys finished their thin stew, the Long Gang sat quietly for the last few minutes allotted for dinner until an old man with sunken cheeks stopped beside them and spoke in Spanish.

“Ah, los terribles cinco. Do you feel it, the air?”

“The five of us aren’t so terrible, unless these boys get riled, but it seems a little hotter out here than usual,” Hack said. “Of course, this place is only a couple of notches below the boiling point in Hell, anyway.”

The man smiled, revealing only two bottom teeth left in his head. “The wind, it comes from the south. There is a storm on the way. Muy malo. This time of the year, they blow off the baja and bring rain and life to the desert.”

The last to finish his stew was Billy Lightning. He paused with the bowl still against his mouth and swallowed. “I thought I felt something in my bones.”

“I am an old man and have seen it once for each decade of my miserable life. If I was much younger, I would ready myself to escape from this hellhole when the storm hits.”

As was his habit in the Mexican prison, Hack glanced across to the guards huddled around a water bucket in the shade of a stick-and-timber portico leading into the comandante’s office. They were laughing and paying more attention to a dice game than their prisoners, knowing the noonday heat would dampen any ideas of trouble.

“Have you ever seen it done, an escape from this place?”

“No, but I’ve heard about it. No one has broken out of here in nearly twenty years. The last time was the dark of the moon, but the one before my time was when fifteen men climbed the wall. Only five got away. The others were killed by the Apaches they used to track them. For every man killed, the one who did it received two pieces of gold.”

“Apaches working with Mexicans?”

“Civilized Apaches who live that way, in the Chisos Mountains.”

A tingle ran up Hack’s spine and an idea formed, making him feel more alive than he had for months. “How long does it take them to get a tracker from out there?”

“It would be at least a day, unless a couple were in the village for supplies or mescal.”

“There’s no way to get out of the cells, though, once it starts storming.”

“You can be like Torres. Bribe Perez there to let you out for a midnight fight. If it was me, I would tell him you knew Escobedo outside and needed to settle with him. Perez loves to gamble like he’s doing over there right now, shooting dice, and would welcome to see a match with you and Escobedo, and he’d bet on you to win.”

“Well, I’ve already stood up for him.”

“So you could kill him yourself.”

Hack forced a grin off the corners of his mouth. He’d been there for so long his mind didn’t seem to work, and that idea had never occurred to him. And here it was, an old man giving them all a way out, served on a platter. “Then I could take Perez, get his keys, and let the others out.”

“That is a good plan.”

“Why’re you telling me this? This is your plan, not mine.”

“Because I am too used up to fight and run. I will die here, but the other reason is that I don’t like Perez and would like to see his dead eyes open and collecting dust.”

Luke drew in the dust with a forefinger. “Mighty hard talk, just because you don’t like the man.”

“He cheated me in a dice game when I first came here and took my shoes.” The old man looked down at the worn-out huaraches on his feet. The pitiful sandals had been repaired so many times with strips of leather they almost looked like small mops. “My good shoes would not fit him, but he sold them in the village and used the money to entertain one of his ladies of the night.”

Close enough to hear, the rest of the guys remained silent, but they were working things out in their own minds. They’d learned not long after arriving at the prison that groups involved in too much discussion brought suspicious guards. They were Hack’s men but had their own minds and did what they wanted. They came and went when the Long Gang was working north of the river. Though these were his core group, there were others from time to time.

Instead of gathering to hear, Two-Horses and Gabriel Santana were stretched out along the wall, pretending to sleep. Billy Lightning sat four feet away, sanding a callus off his hand with a rock. They were all listening, and if one were close enough to feel the rising tension and elation, it was easy to tell that the men who’d resigned themselves to incarceration were once again ready to ride.

The chief guard, Juan Perez, rose from an arbor shade reserved only for him and his men and sniffed the air like a dog, filtering much of the scorching air through a mustache that sprouted thick and heavy against his nostrils. In addition to the dust and manure coming from a corral outside the walls, there was a hint of dampness.

He kicked a resting guard’s foot and poked another’s shoulder, prodding them from the raw wooden benches against their quarters’ wall. “Get up. These men need to work and a storm is coming. The comandante will want one last shift back to the mine before the rain falls.”

Though he and the comandante, Raul Mendoza, would have preferred for their prisoners to work from morning to night, they long ago discovered that a full day in the mine would kill them and that a dead prisoner couldn’t make money for the jefe’s pockets. Instead, they dug for half a day, then returned to the prison as the second shift took up shovels and picks to worry copper from the mine, then they’d switch again.

Although he acted as if irritated, Perez was pleased with the changing weather. He heard the day before that his favorite cantina server was back at work. Juana had been taken to Mexico City by a soldier loyal to Porfirio Diaz, the country’s president, but for some unknown reason, he’d sent her packing, and that was fortunate for Perez. A rainy day meant he could leave the prisoners in their cells and visit with her to spend his money.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t work in the mines while it rained, but Comandante Mendoza was afraid the inmates would use the weather in an attempt to escape as they were moved back and forth between the mines and the prison. Better to let them remain behind bars, and besides, everyone wanted some time off, and that went for him and his men, too.

He paused to stare in the direction of the little mining village that lay between the ancient structure that was once a mission run by friars and the entrance into the low, barren mountain that looked like an animal’s burrow.

Against a backdrop of gathering storm clouds and lit by the sun, which was not yet covered, two spirals of buzzards turned lazy circles over areas of interest. Perez studied the scavengers, wondering if they were human or animal bodies that lured them to those particular portions of the sky. He loved the scavengers, and he once even had the opportunity to share a trabajador’s pleasures while letting her do all the work as he laid on his back and stared out of an open window to watch the carrion birds float overhead.

Maybe it would happen again sometime soon. With that pleasant thought in mind, Perez remained where he was in the shade as the guards kicked the afternoon shift upright and those who’d been in the mines that morning went to their hot cells. Spending time in those hot, airless cubicles was a different kind of punishment and wasn’t considered as a pleasant gift.

Finally bestirring himself, Perez used a fingernail to pick at the dirt crusted in the corners of his eyes and followed the men past the hotbox. He paused beside the sunbaked door in the windowless structure made from hand-packed adobe. “Torres, are you still alive in there?”

The man who’d been beaten within an inch of his life by the newest inmate groaned an answer, and Perez chuckled. “It seems that you are. Feel better, my friend. We need another match between you and the boy who put you in there.” He gave the hotbox a slight kick, doing nothing but dislodging crumbling sand and rocks. “You cost me a lot of money, amigo. That’s why you’re in there. You need to earn it back and, possibly, your life.”

It was a blistering afternoon. He watched the prisoners march out the front gate and went inside la oficina del alcalde to cool off a little and visit with the comandante. Raul Mendoza always had interesting stories to tell.

Lockup came at the end of the day as the filtered sun settled over the distant mountains, where a dark, odd color crept into the sky. Having grown up in Texas, neither Hack nor the boys were strangers to violent weather. Blue northers appeared in the fall, the coming line on the horizon always blue-black as it rushed southward, bringing icy cold winds, rain, and oftentimes sleet or hail under the right conditions.

Springtime north of the Rio Grande often brought ugly green skies that blotted the sun and birthed fierce hailstorms with stones as big as a man’s fist and, more often than not, cyclones that . . .