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Synopsis
FOUR JOHNSTONE WEDDINGS—AND A FUNERAL
If anyone can get a shipment of brides to the church on time, it's Bo Creel and Scratch Morton. But this time, they'll have to cross hell and high water to escort four marriage-bound beauties to a remote gold mining town in Alaska. The brides-to-be include a dangerously attractive widow, her sweet-hearted niece, and two of their friends. The roadblocks to the altar include a lecherous saloon owner, a lovesick sailor, and a gang of hired guns. And that's just for starters . . .
The real trouble begins when they reach the Alaskan boomtown. It's a hotbed of gold and greed, as wild as any Texas frontier. It's clear to Bo and Scratch that the ladies' "eligible bachelors" are definitely not as advertised. But—to Bo and Scratch's surprise—neither are their mail-order brides. Before anyone starts exchanging vows and tossing rice, this gold-hungry wedding party will be swapping lead. And the RSVPs will be RIPs . . .
Release date: August 31, 2021
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Print pages: 332
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Till Death
William W. Johnstone
“I don’t know,” Bo Creel replied from where he sat on the hard wooden bench next to his old friend. Bo stretched his legs into the aisle that ran down the middle of the car and crossed them at the ankles. “I reckon we just never had a good enough reason to drift up this way.”
Washington State was a long way from Texas, that was for sure, and was where Bo and Scratch hailed from. Not that they had spent most of their time there over the years, as Scratch had indicated.
They had grown up in the Lone Star State and had, in fact, taken part in the fight for Texas’s independence from Mexico when they were in their middle teens. In those days, that had been considered being a man “full-growed,” especially if a fella was big enough to pick up a rifle and take part in the fight against the dictator Santa Anna’s army. Bo and Scratch had done just that at San Jacinto, back on that warm April day in 1836.
Since then the two of them had been through a lot together: triumph and tragedy, dreams fulfilled and hopes lost, and restless natures that wouldn’t be denied as they drifted fiddle-footed around the frontier, not searching for trouble but inevitably finding it.
In recent months they had taken to working for a matrimonial agency, of all things. Cyrus Keegan, who ran the business out of Fort Worth, provided mail-order brides for lonely bachelors all over the West, from the Rio Grande to the Milk River, from the Mississippi to the Pacific. Those brides often needed protection when they were traveling to meet their new husbands, and Bo and Scratch provided it. At their semi-advanced age, Bo and Scratch were considered safe enough chaperones and guards for young ladies.
This trip was just getting started, but already it had been quite a journey for Bo and Scratch, all the way up here to the Pacific Northwest from New Mexico, where their previous chore had resulted in a surprising number of powder-burning ruckuses.
That was all right, though; neither of the Texans enjoyed being bored, and flying lead broke up the monotony just fine as long as it didn’t come too close.
At the moment they were on their way to Seattle. Cyrus Keegan had given them the job in person, once things were squared away down in Silverhill. Bo and Scratch never could have made it up here in time if they hadn’t been able to make connections on several different railroads.
Now they were rocking along in a passenger car belonging to the Northern Pacific, which had only recently completed its route through this part of the country and become the nation’s second transcontinental railroad. Farther back in the train, Bo’s and Scratch’s horses rode in one of the livestock cars.
More than likely, the horses would have to be stabled once they reached Seattle, because the next leg of the journey would be by ship.
“Alaska,” Scratch mused as he thumbed his cream-colored Stetson back on his thick silvery hair. “I swear, until mighty recent, if somebody had asked me, I would’ve said it was part of Roosha.”
“Not since 1867. And I’m sure you heard of Seward’s Folly back then, because we talked about it. You’ve just forgotten.”
“I never forgot a thing! My mind’s like a steel trap.”
“Rusted shut?” Bo asked with an innocent look.
“I thought Seward’s Folly was when Pancho Seward up and bought that house of ill repute down in Laredo—”
Scratch didn’t get any further than that, because the train suddenly lurched violently and both Texans were thrown forward against the back of the bench seat in front of them. The adventurous lives they’d led had allowed them to retain the reflexes and reactions of younger men, and they were able to catch themselves against the seatback and push to their feet.
“What in blazes!” Scratch said.
The train was still moving, but a lot slower now. Wheels screeched loudly on the steel rails. Other men in the car stood up and asked questions, and some of the women let out frightened cries because obviously something was wrong.
“The engineer’s trying to stop in a hurry,” Bo said. He raised his voice so the other passengers in the car could hear him as he called, “Everybody grab on to something!”
Another jolt rocked the car, so heavy this time that, for a second, Bo thought the train might derail. The cars stayed upright, though, as the train finally shuddered to a halt.
Bo and Scratch had braced themselves on the seat and were able to keep their feet. Some of the other men hadn’t been as quick to react and spilled to the floor in the aisle.
From somewhere outside came sudden, booming reports of gunfire. Scratch said, “You folks stay where you are and keep your heads down!” He looked at Bo. “I reckon we’re gonna see what this is all about?”
“What do you think?” Bo said as he drew the walnut-butted Colt on his hip and stepped over one of the fallen passengers. He hurried toward the vestibule at the front of the car.
Scratch was right behind him. The silver-haired Texan carried two long-barreled Remington revolvers with ivory grips, and they were in his hands as he emerged onto the car’s front platform.
A shot blasted somewhere not far away. Bo heard the wind rip of the bullet as it passed close beside his ear. He pivoted toward the sound and saw a man on horseback about twenty feet away, thrusting a gun at him for a second try at murder.
Bo’s Colt snapped up and spewed flame. The would-be killer, who had a red bandanna pulled up over the lower half of his face, rocked back in the saddle as the .45 slug ripped through his upper right arm. His gun flew out of his hand before he could get another shot off. His horse began to dance around skittishly, and the wounded man quickly lost his grip and toppled off his mount.
On the other side of the platform, Scratch crouched at the railing and leveled both Remingtons at a handful of masked riders charging up that side of the train. The men fired their guns into the windows of the cars they passed, shattering glass and prompting terrified screams from the passengers inside.
They didn’t notice Scratch until they came alongside the platform, so he took them by surprise as he began triggering both Remingtons. Lead scythed through the group of riders, knocking two of them out of their saddles. A couple more twisted and cried out under the slugs’ impact.
They concentrated their fire on the platform then, as they realized that a deadly threat lurked there. Scratch ducked back, grabbed Bo, and dived to the floor as a storm of bullets ripped through the air just above them.
Farther up the train, toward the engine, an explosion roared and a cloud of smoke billowed up. “They’ve blown the door to the express car!” Bo said as the riders on both sides of the train abandoned their attack and charged forward along the railbed.
Scratch raised his head to look around. “Appears they ain’t gonna bother robbin’ the passengers. Must be something in the express car safe they’re more interested in.”
Shots continued to come from up ahead. Bo said, “The express messengers are putting up a fight.”
“Want to go give ’em a hand?”
“I was thinking about it,” Bo said.
As Bo stood up, he glanced toward the spot where the man he’d shot had fallen. The hombre wasn’t there anymore. Bo figured one of the other outlaws had picked him up.
Holstering his Colt, Bo stepped across to the rear platform on the next car and gripped the iron grab bars on the side. He climbed to the roof with a speed and agility that belied his years. Scratch came up behind him.
The Texans drew their guns again and started forward, sticking to the middle of the roof and crouching as they hurried so they wouldn’t be spotted as easily from the ground.
There were two more passenger cars ahead of the one in which Bo and Scratch had been riding, then the express car. A thinning cloud of smoke from the dynamite that had gone off hung over that car. The outlaws on that side of the train had dismounted and scattered, taking cover in nearby brush and behind rocks as they fired at the express car.
The ones on the other side had galloped ahead, no doubt to take over the engine and keep the engineer and fireman from causing any trouble. Bo spotted them up there around the cab.
That was a problem to be dealt with later, if at all. It was more important right now to keep those robbers from looting the express car.
Not that he and Scratch had any stake in whatever was in the safe. Nobody was paying them to fight off these owlhoots. They were doing it because they had a deep and abiding dislike of lawbreakers, despite the fact that they themselves had been accused of being outlaws over the years and had wound up behind bars a few times because of it.
They leaped the gap between the next two passenger cars, then dropped to their knees and stretched out behind the shallow raised area in the center of the roof. It wouldn’t provide much cover but was better than nothing. From where they were, they had a good angle to open fire on the robbers.
Before they did that, they thumbed fresh rounds into the cylinders of their guns so they had full wheels when they started shooting. They didn’t blast away indiscriminately, either, but aimed their shots where they caught a glimpse of the outlaws or at least the spurts of powder smoke from their guns.
The steady, lethal fire raked through the brush and among the rocks. One of the outlaws toppled into the open after Scratch drilled a .44 bullet through his head. An arm snaked out from behind the same boulder, caught hold of the man’s foot, and dragged him back out of sight, but it was too late to help him. Scratch’s shot had killed him instantly.
Below them in the express car, a rifle cracked frequently, interspersed with dull booms from a shotgun. The shotgun wasn’t going to be very effective at this range, Bo thought, but in a fight, it never hurt to have some buckshot flying around at your enemies. Might make them keep their heads down a little more, anyway.
Some of the men who had taken cover in the rocks and brush raised their sights and returned the fire from Bo and Scratch. The Texans had to scoot backward and keep their own heads down as bullets whipped through the air above them. They took advantage of the opportunity to reload again, and then when the gun thunder let up, they poked their revolvers over the crest of the railroad car’s roof and slammed more rounds in the outlaws’ direction.
Between the stubborn defenders inside the express car and the two Texans atop the train, the robbers were meeting much stiffer resistance than they had expected. That was what Bo figured a minute later when a harsh voice yelled, “Let’s get out of here!”
“What about the boys up at the engine?” another man shouted.
“They’re on their own, damn it!”
Several men leaped to their feet and retreated, firing as they fled deeper into the brush where they had left their horses. Bo and Scratch sent more slugs after them to hurry them on their way. A moment later they heard the swift rataplan of hoofbeats and caught glimpses through the undergrowth of men and horses moving fast in flight.
Bo turned his head to look toward the engine and saw that the members of the gang up there were abandoning the robbery attempt as well. Four horses raced away from the rails, one of the mounts carrying double. More than likely that extra rider was the man Bo had shot through the arm.
As the shooting died away but echoes continued to roll around in the hills on both sides of the tracks, Scratch said, “Looks like they’re takin’ off for the tall and uncut, Bo. You want to grab our horses out of the stock car and go after ’em?”
“I reckon that’s more than anybody could expect of us,” Bo replied as he reloaded the Colt yet again with fresh cartridges from the loops on his shell belt. “Anyway, by the time we could do that, they’d have a big enough lead, we couldn’t catch them. Let’s climb down from here and see if anybody’s hurt bad.”
“And find out how they got the dang train to stop in the first place,” Scratch added.
Bo was a mite curious about that himself.
They clambered down from the train on the same side as the blown-open sliding door on the express car. The dynamite had blasted the door right off, Bo saw, but he couldn’t tell how much damage it had done inside. He didn’t want to spook the men in the car, so as he and Scratch approached the jagged opening, he called, “Hello, in the express car! Hold your fire. We’re friends.”
Now that the echoes from the gunfire had finally faded, the sound of shotgun hammers being cocked inside the car could be heard.
“How do we know that?” a man demanded. “You could be some o’ them no-good snake-in-the-grass train robbers!”
“We’re no train robbers,” Scratch responded. “We’re the ones who ran ’em off, you old codger!”
The shotgun’s twin barrels poked out of the opening, and a leathery white-whiskered face appeared above them.
“Old codger, is it? You look to be ever’ bit as old as I am, you fancy-dressed skalleyhooter!”
It was true that Scratch’s outfit was a little on the fancy side. In addition to the cream-colored Stetson and ivory-handled guns, he favored a fringed buckskin jacket over a white shirt, brown whipcord trousers, and high-topped darker brown boots into which the trousers were tucked.
Bo, in contrast, wore a long dark coat and trousers, and with his white shirt, string tie, and flat-crowned black hat, he resembled a circuit-riding preacher more than anything else. Not many preachers carried a Colt with a butt so well worn from long usage, though.
“My friend’s telling the truth,” Bo assured the fierce old-timer. “When the train stopped so short, we knew there had to be trouble brewing, so we decided to take a hand. My name’s Bo Creel, and this is Scratch Morton.”
“Never heard of ye!” the old-timer snorted. “Keep them guns leathered and don’t reach for ’em, or I’ll touch off both barrels!”
Bo made sure to keep his hands in plain sight as he said, “Don’t worry about that, mister. We’re peaceable men.”
“You just claimed you shot up that bunch o’ train robbers! You can’t have it both ways.”
“Well,” Scratch said, “we’re peaceable men until some owlhoot comes along and forces our hand.”
A moan came from somewhere else in the express car. The old-timer withdrew the shotgun abruptly and said, “Josh! What’s wrong, boy?”
“I . . . I’m all right, Smitty,” the voice of a younger man answered. “A bullet nicked me. It’s not bad, but it hurts like blazes!”
Scratch said, “Reckon Bo or me could tend to it. We’ve had a heap of experience patchin’ up bullet wounds.”
Smitty stuck his head back out of the opening and said, “All right, come on in if you want. I suppose you fellas’ll do to trust. I seen some of those desperadoes get ventilated, and I could tell it wasn’t Josh or me doin’ it.”
Bo said to Scratch, “I’ll deal with this. You go on up ahead and check on the engineer and fireman. Give me a boost before you go, though.”
“Yeah, we ain’t quite as spry as we once were, are we?”
Bo could have pointed out that just a few minutes earlier they had been running around on top of a train and shooting it out with a gang of robbers . . . but that had been in the heat of battle. A fella was capable of a lot more when bullets were zipping past his head. That tended to make him forget how old he really was.
Scratch made a stirrup with his hands and helped Bo pull himself up into the express car, then trotted off toward the engine. Bo looked around and saw that the force of the blast had knocked over the two chairs inside the car, but the sturdy desk and even sturdier safe didn’t appear to have been affected.
The old-timer Smitty set one of the chairs upright and helped a younger man sit down on it. Josh wasn’t exactly young, probably in his early forties, with dark hair so thinned that only a few strands of it ventured from one side of his scalp to the other. Both he and Smitty wore pinstriped trousers, gray wool vests, and white shirts with garters on the sleeves. It was standard garb for employees of Wells Fargo who rode these express cars. They functioned more as clerks than guards, but as today’s events had proven, in times of trouble they were expected to fight back.
Josh had blood on his vest and shirt. Bo knelt in front of him and said, “Let me take a look.” He moved the bloody garments aside and revealed a small hole low on Josh’s right side, just above his waist. Bo reached around and felt more blood on the back of the man’s shirt where the bullet had come out.
“You’re lucky,” he said. “Through and through. It’s messy and I’m sure it hurts like blazes, like you said, but where the holes are located, I doubt if it did any real damage. I can clean it up and bandage it, but you’ll need some real medical attention when you get to Seattle.” He turned his head to ask Smitty, “Do you have any whiskey in here?”
“We ain’t allowed to have liquor in the express car.”
Bo just looked at him for a couple of seconds.
“All right, all right, I might have a little flask cached somewheres.”
“Pour some of it on a clean rag,” Bo told him.
While Bo was cleaning the entrance and exit wounds, a stocky man wearing a blue uniform and black cap hurried up to the blown-out door and said, “Josh, Smitty, are you boys all right in there?”
“We’re alive,” Smitty answered. “Josh got drilled, but this fella don’t seem to think it’s too bad.” The old-timer paused. “Claims he and a pard of his are the ones who helped drive off them robbers.”
“It’s true,” the conductor said. “I saw you up there from the caboose, mister. Who are you? Are you and your friend railroad detectives?”
“No,” said Bo, “we’re in the mail-order bride business.” He had to admit, he kind of got a kick out of how the other three men stared goggle-eyed at him.
A short time later, Bo and Scratch stood alongside the cowcatcher at the front of the engine with the conductor, the engineer, and the fireman and looked at the pile of logs haphazardly blocking the tracks. Some of them had been scattered by the collision with the cowcatcher.
The fireman had a bloodstained rag tied around his left arm where he had been grazed by a bullet. He raised his right arm and pointed at a steep slope to the left.
“They rolled ’em down from there,” he said. “I saw the last couple of logs comin’ down the hill at the same time as Roy spotted the ones already on the tracks, and I threw on the brakes.”
“We almost got stopped in time, too,” the engineer said. “It gave the train a pretty good jolt when we plowed into the pile, but it would’ve been worse if we’d been going faster. Might have even been enough to derail us.”
The conductor sighed and nodded. “I’ll go through the passenger cars and see if I can get some volunteers to move those logs. Hope we’ve got some big, strong men on board today. That’ll be faster than climbing a pole and cutting in on a telegraph line to call for a work train out of Seattle.”
“How far out are we?” Bo asked.
“Not all that far, really. We’ll be there in a couple of hours. Or I should say, we would have been. It’ll take a while to get these tracks cleared.” The conductor stuck out his hand. “Thanks for pitching in like you did, both of you. I reckon they would have killed Josh and Smitty, and there’s no telling who else they might have hurt. As far as I know, nobody else was wounded, just shaken up some when the train had to stop so short.”
Bo and Scratch shook hands with the conductor, and then the engineer and fireman wanted to shake, too. While that was going on, Scratch asked, “Have you been havin’ trouble with holdups on this run?”
The conductor shrugged. “Some. Today’s the first time they ever dynamited the express car, though. The other times they just robbed the passengers.”
“Same bunch?”
“Who in Hades knows? One outlaw with a mask on looks just like every other one.” The conductor shook his head and went on. “Somehow they must have known—”
The abrupt way the man stopped made Bo think. He said, “The express car was carrying a bigger load of money than usual, wasn’t it?”
“If you were a lawman, friend, I might answer that.”
“Lawman, hell,” the engineer said. “I don’t care who these fellas are, they done us a favor, and when they get to Seattle, Rollin Kemp ought to give them a reward, if you ask me. Or at least stand ’em to some drinks in his saloon!”
Bo said, “I take it that money shipment is going to this fella Kemp?”
The conductor sighed and then said, “You didn’t hear it from me, but . . . yeah, that’s right. He owns one of the biggest saloons in Seattle.”
“Seems like he’d be more likely to be shippin’ money out instead of in,” Scratch commented.
“Don’t ask me about Kemp’s business. He’s a good man not to get too curious about, if you know what I mean.”
While the conductor went to round up more help, Bo, Scratch, and the engineer got busy moving logs. The fireman, with his wounded arm, had to stand aside from that chore. Most of the logs were too heavy to lift, even for four men, but they were able to roll some of the thick trunks out of the way.
With the help of a dozen more passengers, the track was cleared in about an hour. Everyone climbed back aboard, the engineer got up steam, and the train rolled on toward Seattle.
Once Bo and Scratch were settled in their seats again, the silver-haired Texan took off his hat and said, “I could practically see the wheels turnin’ in your head, Bo, while we were talkin’ to the conductor. He got you wonderin’ about the gang that’s been holdin’ up trains in these parts, didn’t he?”
“We don’t know it’s always the same gang,” Bo said.
“Could be, though. And you were curious, too, about how they knew about that pile of money in the express car safe.”
Bo nodded slowly. “Yeah, those thoughts crossed my mind. It’s going to be up to somebody else to poke around and get to the bottom of it, though, if that ever happens. We have responsibilities of our own, remember?”
“I ain’t likely to forget, especially when those responsibilities are named Beatrice, Martha, Sally, and Caroline.”
Seattle’s Occidental Hotel was a grand, two-and-a-half-story, whitewashed wooden building at the foot of a hill covered with fine homes, although the residences were less ostentatious as the slope went higher. Beyond the hill, the snowcapped peak of one of the mountains east of the city was visible.
Looking the other direction from the second-floor balcony on the front of the hotel, as she was doing this moment, Beatrice O’Rourke could see Puget Sound and Elliott Bay, as well as Bainbridge Island on the opposite side of the wide stretch of water. Beatrice rested her hands on the railing and thought, not for the first time, what a beautiful place this was.
She had no interest in remaining in Seattle, however. Not with what she hoped was waiting for her in Alaska.
Beatrice was an attractive dark-haired woman in her late thirties. A small beauty mark near her mouth gave her face character rather than detracting from her looks. Her brown eyes displayed intelligence and determination as she peered toward the waterfront, where the tall masts of numerous ships stood out against the sweep of water in the sound.
A soft footstep behind her made Beatrice turn away from the railing. Her niece Caroline DeHerries stood there, her hands clasped together and a nervous look on her lovely face. Caroline was twenty years old, in the full flower of young beauty. Fluffy blond hair surrounded her face.
“He’s downstairs again, Aunt Beatrice,” Caroline said. “I spotted him waiting in the lobby and ducked back upstairs before he noticed me. At least, I hope so.”
“Kemp, you mean?”
“Yes, Mr. Kemp.”
Beatrice’s lips tightened in anger. “I’ve had one talk with the man already. It appears I shall have to have another one.”
“Perhaps I can just avoid him until it’s time to leave Seattle,” Caroline said. “Surely it won’t be much longer before the escorts employed by the agency arrive and we can book our passage to Alaska.”
“Yes, they should be here any day now,” Beatrice agreed, “but any time spent enduring the unwanted attentions of a boor such as Rollin Kemp is too long.”
She moved past Caroline and went into one of the two adjoining rooms where the mail-order brides were staying.
Martha Rousseau and Sally Bechdolt sat at a table in the room, playing cribbage. They were younger than Beatrice, in their early thirties, but like Beatrice and Caroline, they were quite attractive. Martha had auburn curls piled on her head, while Sally’s blond hair was darker than Caroline’s, more like the color of honey. Both women looked up from their cards as Beatrice stalked into the room.
“You look like you’re about to march off to war,” Sally said. “What’s wrong?”
“Caroline just told me we have a snake lurking downstairs,” Beatrice replied.
“And you’re going to go chop his head off?” Martha asked.
“It may come to that,” Beatrice said.
The three women followed her as she left the room and headed for the stairs. Caroline hung back, staying behind Martha and Sally.
When Beatrice reached the bottom of the staircase, she stopped and looked around the lobby, which, while hardly as ornate as the hotel lobbies to be found back east in the big cities, was furnished comfortably and had a few potted plants here and there. Beatrice’s gaze focused on a man wearing a gray tweed suit and sitting in a wing chair next to one of those plants.
He was reading a newspaper, or at least pretending to. . .
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