Authors: William W. Johnstone
“I'd rather meet them on my feet,” Luke said. He rose, kicked the door open, and went out with both guns blazing. Glory and Whittaker were right behind him, and their guns were roaring as well as they poured lead into the small army of gunmen charging the house.
That was when nearly two dozen men on horseback came boiling around the corner of the barn and smashed into the killers, taking them totally by surprise. Elston's men went down from the pounding lead of the newcomers' guns and under the slashing, steel-shod hooves of their horses. Luke saw the tall, lanky, redheaded figure of Rusty Gimple leading the charge. Old Kaintuck guided his horse with his knees as he fired right and left with a brace of old cap-and-ball pistols. Even the two young wranglers, Ernie and Vince, were with the group.
The MC cowboys couldn't have won stand-up gunfights with Elston's hired killers, but in this melee they crashed through and over the gun-wolves and wiped out most of them in a matter of seconds.
Some of them escaped the lightninglike charge, though, and kept fighting. Whitey Singletary emerged from the roiling clouds of dust and gunsmoke that now obscured the ranch yard and lunged toward Luke, Glory, and Whittaker as the gun in his hand jetted flame.
They fired back, the three shots so close together that they sounded like one, and Singletary was jolted to a stop by the slugs that crashed into his chest. He stood there for a second, swaying, his pale face twisted in lines of pure hatred, before his eyes rolled up in their sockets and he pitched forward to lie there in the stillness of death.
That left Harry Elston. Holding a gun he had picked up, still dressed only in the long underwear, he walked out of the chaos and came toward Luke and the others. Elston stepped around Singletary's body. The gun in his hand was pointed at the ground.
“Elston, you're under arrest,” Sheriff Whittaker called to him. “Drop that gun!”
Elston shook his head and said, “No.”
“Don't be a damned fool, man,” Luke told him. “Even after all this, you won't hang.”
Elston smiled.
“You think I intend to spend one day behind bars?” he asked. “A man like me who spent his life on the open sea?”
Elston lifted the revolver, put the muzzle to his temple, and pulled the trigger.
That was the last shot of the battle of the Lazy EO.
“I'm sorry, Sheriff,” Rusty Gimple said. “After I told you about Miz MacCrae bein' missin', I didn't have faith that you'd really come out here and make sure Elston didn't have anything to do with it. So me and a few of the boys followed you.”
Rusty and Whittaker were in the glass-littered parlor of Elston's house, along with Luke and Glory. Outside, the rest of the MC crew was gathering up the bodies of the dead gunmen and keeping an eye on the wounded survivors.
“I did ride out here, though,” Whittaker said. “I don't like to admit it, but I took sides in what was going on around here . . . and it was the wrong side.”
“You risked your life to try to help us,” Glory told him. “And you fought beside us this morning. I think that's a start on making things right.”
“I hope so,” Whittaker said with a nod. “I should have figured out sooner just how crooked Whitey really was, though.”
“That was a mistake, all right,” Luke said. “But we all make them.”
Rusty nodded and said, “Yeah, I sure did. When you rode up here and then didn't come back, Sheriff, I was more convinced than ever that you were workin' for Elston. So I sent one of the boys with me back to the MC to bring the whole crew. We were gonna bust in here this mornin' and find the boss lady, even if we got shot up doin' it.”
“Instead, you got here just in time to save us,” Glory told him with a smile. “I won't forget this, Rusty.” She sighed. “But I don't know if it really matters. I won't be running the MC much longer.”
Rusty frowned and asked, “Why in blazes not?”
Glory didn't answer, so Luke said quietly, “Hugh Jennings.”
“That's right,” Glory said. “He's locked in one of the rooms upstairs. Now that he knows where I am . . .”
“He could stay locked up for a while,” Luke suggested. “Long enough for you to leave.”
Without hesitation, Glory shook her head.
“I'm through running,” she said. “I never did like the idea. It's time to go back and face . . . whatever's waiting for me.” She stood up. “I'm going to go turn him loose. Luke, will you come with me?”
“Sure,” Luke said. He wondered if he could get away with shooting Jennings. The man didn't deserve to live.
But Luke knew he couldn't do that. He was a bounty hunterâthe lowest of the low, in the minds of a lot of peopleâbut he wasn't a murderer.
Whittaker asked, “Who in blazes is this Jennings fella?”
“It's a long story, Sheriff,” Glory said. “I'll tell you all about it later.”
Whittaker looked like he wanted to argue and demand an explanation now, but he nodded and said, “All right. But I'll hold you to that.”
He and Rusty went outside to see how the mopping up was going, while Luke and Glory climbed the stairs to the second floor.
“Do you know which room Hugh is in?” Glory asked as they started along the hallway.
“No, Iâ” Luke stopped short as he saw a door into one of the rooms hanging crookedly on its hinges. The doorjamb was splintered around the lock.
Somebody had kicked that door open.
That familiar cold prickle on the back of his neck warned him that someone was behind him. He stiffened and started to reach for the gun in his waistband when Hugh Jennings said, “Stop what you're doing, Jensen. Another move and I'll kill you.”
“Hugh!” Glory started to jerk around, but Jennings stopped her with a harsh command.
“Turn around, both of you, but slowly,” Jennings went on. “Jensen, lift your hands and keep them up.”
Luke raised his arms and turned. Beside him, Glory turned around, too. Her face was taut with anger.
“You broke the door down during all the shooting, didn't you?” she said to Jennings. “Nobody heard you with that going on.”
Jennings smirked over the revolver he pointed at them.
“That's right,” he said. “I found this gun, too, and now I'm going to use it to kill both of you.”
“I thought you wanted to take me back and put me on trial for a murder that
you
committed.”
Jennings cocked his head to the side and grinned. He said, “That's the thing about trials. You can never guarantee how they're going to come out. And I don't need you going back to Baltimore and spreading a lot of wild stories about me. No, I think it'll be much better if you're dead . . .
Mother
. That way you'll be just another fugitive that justice caught up to, and the whole affair with be over and done with, forever.”
“And you will have gotten away with murder,” Luke said.
Jennings laughed.
“So what if I have? I've already gotten away with one, haven't I?”
“You mean Alfred,” Glory said, her voice cold with hate.
“Of course. He should have known better than to threaten me. He was going to send me to jail over a measly hundred thousand dollars when losing it wouldn't have hurt him. What other choice did I have but to kill him?”
Luke said, “Reckon you could say that a little louder? I'm not sure Sheriff Whittaker heard it, standing down there at the bottom of the stairs like he is.”
Jennings started to sneer again, the contempt evident on his face at what he must have thought was a trick, but then Whittaker said, “Oh, I heard every bit of it, clear as a bell.”
Jennings's head jerked to the side. The gun in his hand followed, pulling out of line with Luke and Glory for a split second. Luke's left hand shot out and shoved Glory through the door Jennings had kicked open earlier, while his right flashed to the gun in his waistband. The Colt cleared and came up and roared just as Jennings jerked the trigger of his gun and sent a wild shot flying wide.
Luke's bullet struck Jennings in the chest and punched him backwards onto the stairs. His feet hit empty air and he fell, tumbling down out of control until his body came to a halt in a crumpled heap at the feet of Sheriff Jared Whittaker. Luke had seen Whittaker come in and approach the stairs. That was why he had goaded Jennings into confessing.
The lawman looked up at Luke and Glory, now standing at the top of the stairs as a wisp of smoke curled from the muzzle of the gun in Luke's hand, and said, “I reckon this has got something to do with that long story you were going to tell me, Mrs. MacCrae?”
“It has everything to do with it,” Glory said.
Whittaker nodded.
“Don't worry,” he said. “I heard plenty. You think the authorities back where you come from would take the word of a Texas sheriff about that confession this fella just spouted?”
“I think they'd take the word of an honest Texas sheriff,” Glory said. “And I think that's what we're going to have in Painted Post from now on.”
Several days later, Glory looked up at Luke as he sat on the back of the dun and said, “But you came all this way, did everything that you did, saved my ranch, saved my life . . . and you didn't get anything out of it! You should at least let me give you the five thousand dollars you would have earned as a bounty if you'd taken me in.”
Luke smiled and shook his head.
“I got to eat my fill of Teresa's fine food,” he said as he nodded and touched the brim of his hat in a salute to the little Mexican woman who stood in the doorway of the ranch house. “And I made some good friends.”
He lifted a hand in a wave of farewell to Gabe Pendleton, Rusty Gimple, Kaintuck, Ernie Frazier, and Vince Halligan. The cowboys stood in front of the bunkhouse, Pendleton leaning on a cane since he was still weak from the gunshot wound he had suffered in town. He had insisted on coming back to the ranch, though, and was on the mend, anybody could see that.
Quietly, Luke added, “And I got some smiles and kisses from one of the most beautiful, determined women I've ever met in my life.”
“You could have a lot more than that, and you know it.”
“Maybe . . . but that's not the life I've made for myself.”
“Isn't it a lonely life, though?” Glory asked as she reached up to him. “It's going to be a lonely life for me.”
Luke clasped her hand and said, “I doubt that. I think you'll have plenty of attention from Gabe and from Sheriff Whittaker. One of these days you'll probably have to decide between them. Just let the loser down easy, if you can. He'll be losing a lot.”
“Luke . . .”
He smiled and shook his head.
With a sigh, she slipped her hand out of his. He turned the dun, heeled the horse into a trot, and waved again at the men in front of the bunkhouse as he rode away.
For a long time, whenever he rode away from a pretty woman who would have been glad for him to stay, he had told himself that one of these days he would settle down. One of these days he would have a family and a home and put the life of a bounty hunter behind him. No more cold nights sleeping on the hard ground, no more danger lurking in every shadow, no more waking up in the morning with the smell of gunsmoke clinging to him. Yes, one of these days . . .
But Luke Jensen knew that day would never come, so he put his eyes on the horizon and rode toward whatever was on the other side of it.
100 Y
EARS
L
ATER, THE
W
AR FOR A
MERICAN
F
REEDOM
IS
B
EGINNING
A
GAIN
Â
THE GREATEST WESTERN WRITER
OF THE 21ST CENTURY
Â
William Johnstone is acclaimed for his American frontier
chronicles. A national bestseller, the legendary storyteller,
along with J. A. Johnstone, has written a powerful new novel
set in Texasâone century after the Revolutionary War. . . .
Â
LIBERTYâOR DIE FOR IT
Â
One hundred years ago, a thousand miles from Last Chance,
Texas, American patriots picked up rifles and fought against
British tyranny. That was Boston. This is Big Bend River
country. There the enemy was King George III and his
British troops. In Last Chance, it's Abraham Hacker,
a rich and powerful cattle baron who will slaughter anyone
who tries to lay claim to the fertile land and everything on it.
For Last Chance, freedom is one intolerable act at a time,
until wounded Texas Ranger Hank Cannan arrives in
Last Chance. Seeing the oppressed citizens, Cannan is
ready to start a second revolution. It's going to take a lot
of guts. But one way or the other, Cannan is out to set Last
Chance freeâwith bullets, blood, and a willingness
to dieâand killâfor the American right of freedom....
Â
DAY OF INDEPENDENCE
by
USA TODAY
BESTSELLING AUTHORS
W
ILLIAM
W. J
OHNSTONE
with J. A. Johnstone
Â
On sale now, wherever Pinnacle Books are sold.
Texas Ranger Hank Cannan was in one hell of a fix.
In fact, he told himself that very thing.
“Hank,” he said, “you're in one hell of a fix.”
He uttered that statement aloud, as is the way of men who often ride long and lonely trails.
About ten minutes earlierâCannan couldn't pin down the exact timeâa bullet had slammed into him just above his gun belt on his left side, and another had hit his right thigh.
In addition, after his horse threw him, he'd slammed his head into a wagon wheel and now, for at least part of the time, he was seeing double.
With so many miseries, Cannan reckoned that his future career prospects had taken a distinct downhill turn, especially since the bushwhacker somewhere out there in the hills was seeing single and was a pretty good marksman to boot.
The rifleman had earlier stated his intentions clearly enough, but Cannan could not bring himself to agree to his terms.
Yelling across a hundred yards of open ground, the man had demanded Cannan's horse, saddle, guns, boots and spurs, his wallet, watch, and wedding ring, and whatever miscellaneous items of value he may have about his person.
“And if I don't?” Cannan called back.
“Then I'll kill you as dead as a rotten stump.”
“You go to hell!” Cannan said.
“Ladies first,” the bushwhacker yelled.
Then he laughed.
That exchange had happened a good five minutes ago, and since then . . . nothing.
Between Cannan and the hidden rifleman lay flat, sandy ground, thick with cactus and mesquite, but here and there desert shrubs like tarbrush and ocotillo prospered mightily.
The Texas sun scorched hot and drowsy insects that made their small music in the bunchgrass. There was no other sound, just a vast silence that had been scarred by rifle shots.
Cannan, long past his first flush of youth, gingerly explored the wound on his side with the flat of his hand. It came away bloody.
One glimpse at his gory thigh convinced him that he had to end this standoff real quick or bleed to death.
But the drawbacks to that plan were twofold: his rifle was in the saddle boot and the horse under that saddle could be anywhere by now, as was his pack mule.
The second, and much more pressing given his present circumstances, was that the only weapon he had available to him was his old Colt .45.
Now there were many Rangers who were skilled with the revolver, fast and accurate on the draw and shoot.
Cannan wasn't one of them.
His colleagues rated his prowess with a Colt as fair to middling, but only on a good day, a nekkid-on-the-back-porch kind of good day.
Hank Cannan could never recall having one of those.
But most gun-savvy men allowed that he had at least the potential to be a widow-maker with a rifleâexcept now he had no rifle.
After his horse tossed him, he'd landed in a creosote bush and his forehead had crashed into an ancient wagon wheel half buried in sand. It had been the wheel's iron rim, still intact, that had done the damage and made Cannan see stars and, later, two of everything.
He'd hunkered down in the creosote bush and had propped up the wheel in front of him, where it provided at least an illusion of cover. But he knew he had to move soon before he grew any weaker.
His only hope was to outflank the bushwhacker and Injun close enough to get his work in with the Colt at spitting distance.
Cannan stared out at the brush flat, sweat running through the crusted, scarlet stain on his forehead.
He didn't like what he saw.
The ground was too open. Even crouched, he would present a big target. Two or three steps, and he'd be a dead duck.
Cannan sighed. Jane a widow after just six months of marriage, imagine that. It just didn't seem right somehow. He'dâ
“Hey, you over there!” the bushwhacker yelled. “You dead yet?”
“Yeah, I'm dead,” Cannan called out. “Damn you, I'm shot through and through. What do you think?”
“I'm a man gets bored real easy, and this here standoff is getting mighty tiresome. When do you reckon you'll pass away, if it's not asking an impertinent question?”
“By nightfall, I reckon. Depending on how I bleed, maybe a little sooner.”
“Hell, that's way too long. I got places to go, things to do.”
“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Cannan said.
“Tell you what,” the rifleman said.
Cannan said nothing.
“I'll take your hoss and leave you to die at your leisure. I can't say fairer than that. What do you reckon, huh? State your intentions.”
“All I can say is that you're a good Christian,” Cannan said. “Straight up an' true blue and a credit to your profession.”
“Well me, I learned that Christian stuff from a real nice feller I shared a cabin with one winter over to Black Mesa way in the Arizona Territory. He'd been a preacher until he took up the bank-robbing vocation. We were both on the scout at the time, you understand.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Cannan said. “Being on the scout an' all.”
“Well, anyhoo, come spring I split his skull open with a wood axe, on account of he had a gold watch chain I wanted. I'm wearing it right now, in fact.”
“Well, wear it in good health,” Cannan said.
There was moment's pause, then the bushwhacker said, “You're a right personable feller, a white man through and through, and it's been a pleasure doing business with you.”
“You, too,” Cannan said.
He wiped away sweat and blood from his forehead with the back of his gun hand, then gripped the blue Colt tighter.
He needed a break. He needed the drop. And right then neither of those things seemed likely.
But there was one option open to Hank Cannan, stark though it was.
He could die like a Texas Ranger.
Better one moment of hellfire glory, bucking Colt in hand, than to slowly bleed to death in the brush like a wounded rabbit.
But first . . .
Cannan reached into his shirt pocket and found the tally book and a stub of pencil that every Ranger carried.
He held the little notebook against his bent left knee and wrote laboriously in large print:
DEAR JANE, I THOUGHT OF YOU TO THE
LAST. I DIED GAME, AS A RANGER SHOULD.
YOUR LOVING HUSBAND,
Henry Cannan, Esq.
Cannan read the letter, read it again, and smiled, deciding it was crackerjack.
He tore the page out of the tally book, folded it carefully, and shoved it into his pocket where an undertaker was sure to find it.
Then he rose painfully to his feet, and, his bloody face set and determined, staggered toward the hidden gunman.
He planned to keep on shooting until the sheer weight of the bushwhacker's lead finally put him down.
They say fortune favors the brave, and if that is so, Cannan caught his first lucky break.
His ambusher, a big, bearded man wearing a black coat and pants, was in the act of mounting his horse and didn't see Cannan coming at him.
He'd also slid his rifle into his boot. A fatal mistake.
The Ranger tottered forward, then the bearded man turned his head and saw him.
He grabbed for the Winchester under his knee as Cannan two-handed his Colt to eye level and fired.
It was a “nekkid on the back porch” kind of day for Ranger Hank Cannan.
He scored a hit, then as the big man tried to bring the rifle to bear, scored another.
The bushwhacker's horse did not behave well.
A tall, rangy, American stud, it reared up and white, fearful arcs showed in its eyes. The horse attempted to shy away from Cannan's fire, and its rider cursed and battled to get his mount under control.
It was now or never for the Ranger.
A plunging, moving target is difficult to hit, and he missed with his third shot, scored again with his fourth.
Cannan had no time to shoot a fifth because the bearded man toppled out of the saddle and thudded onto the ground, puffs of dust rising around him.
Aware that he'd only one round left, Cannan, bent over from the pain in his side, advanced on the downed man. But the bushwhacker, whoever he was, was out of it.
Blood stained the front of the white shirt he wore under his coat, and the left side of his neck looked as though it had been splashed with red paint.
The man stared at Cannan with rapidly fading blue eyes that held no anger or accusation.
Cannan understood that, because he recognized his assailant as Black John Merritt, bank robber, sometime cow town lawman, and lately, hired gun.
Professional gunmen like Merritt held no grudges.
“I recollect you from your wanted dodger,” Cannan said. “The likeness didn't do you justice.”
“You've killed me,” Merritt said.
“Seems like.”
“My luck had to run out sometime, I guess.”
“Happens to us all.”
“I got lead into you.”
“You surely did.”
“I hope your luck doesn't run out.”
Merritt licked his lips.
“Hell, got blood all over my damned mouth.”
“You're lung shot,” Cannan said. “Saw that right off.”
“Figured I was.”
Merritt had been leaning on one elbow. Now he lay flat and stared at the sky, scorched almost white by the merciless sun. He gritted his teeth against pain, but made no sound.
Then he said, gasping a little, “Who are you, mister?”
“Name's Hank Cannan. I'm a Texas Ranger.”
Merritt smiled, his scarlet teeth glistening. “I should have suspicioned that. You boys don't know when you're beat.”
“Goes with the job, I reckon.”
Cannan lowered the hammer of his Colt and shoved it into the holster.
He felt light-headed, and the pain in his side was a living thing with fangs.
“Why did you decide to bushwhack me, Merritt?” he said.
“I was bored. It gave me something to do.”
“You tried to kill me because you were bored?”
“Why not? I'm a man-killer by profession. Another killing more or less don't make much of a difference. I've already gunned more than my share.”
“Merritt, I don't much like talking harsh words to a dying man, but you're a real son-of-a-bitch and low down.”
“Truer words were never spoke, Ranger.”
The gunman was barely hanging on, and gray death shadows gathered in his cheeks and temples. His gaze was still fixed on the sun-scorched sky, as though he wished to carry that sight with him into hell.
Merritt's words came slow, labored, like a man biting pieces off a tough steak. “Where you headed?” he said.
“I'm hunting a man. I go where he goes.”
“What manner of man?”
“A man like you.”
“Then he'll head for Last Chance.”
“Where's that?”
“A town on the Big Bend, down by the Rio Grande.”
“There are no towns in this part of Texas. Nothing for miles around but sand, cactus, and rock.”
“Last Chance is there . . . due south . . . ten, twelve miles . . . hiring guns . . . gold . . .”
Cannan tensed as Merritt reached into his coat, but the man brought out only a gold double eagle.
“Ranger, take this,” he said. “Make sure they bury me decent.”
The coin slipped from Merritt's fingers and dropped into the sand.
“Promise me . . .” he whispered.
“I'll send you to your reward in a good Christian manner, Merritt,” Cannan said.
But he was talking to a dead man.
Black John Merritt was a big man, and heavy, and Hank Cannan had a hard time getting the gunman draped across his horse.
Cannon's own bay wandered back with the pack mule, but the Ranger was all used up and it was a while before he mustered strength enough to climb into the saddle.
After the gnawing pain in his side subsided a little, Cannan sat his horse and thought things through.
He'd lost Dave Randall's trail two days before in the deep ravine country up by Dagger Mountain. Figuring the outlaw might head for Mexico, Cannan had scouted as far south as the Chisos Mountains when Merritt decided to take a pot at him.
Now, at least one bullet in him, he was in need of urgent medical care. But around him stretched miles of hostile brush desert and raw, limestone mountain peaks that held themselves aloof and didn't give a damn.
As Cannan had told himself before, he was in a hell of a fix.
Unless . . .
Cannan stared at a sky slowly fading into turquoise blue at the end of the burned-out day, as if to seek the answer to the question he hadn't yet asked.
Could there really be a settlement due south of here on the big bend of the Rio Grande?
Cannan told himself that it was a ridiculous notion.
All this land would grow was a fair crop of rocks and cactus, and starving cattle would soon leave their bones on the desert sands, as would those who owned them.
If there really was a Last Chance, by now it was a ghost town inhabited by owls, pack rats, and the quick shadows of people long gone.
Cannan decided to take the gamble.
Last Chance was the only card he had left to play.
At best, he'd find a town. At the worst, a ruined roof to sleep under.
Or die under.
Â
Â
Hank Cannan would remember little of his ride south.
He'd later recall that the mule and the dead man's sorrel stud ponied well and didn't try to pull his arm out of its socket.
The yipping coyotes challenging the rising moonâhe remembered that, and the far-off howls of a hunting wolf pack.
Cannan didn't remember trying to build a cigarette and cursing as both tobacco sack and papers fell from his weakening hands.
Nor would he recall staring at Black John's face in the moonlight, bone-white, the wide-open eyes glinting behind slate shadows.
And perhaps it's best that he'd never bring to mind Merritt's ghostly, hollow voice whispering to him that hell is not hot, but cold . . . colder than mortal man can imagine.
“You're a damned liar!” Cannan yelled. “You're burning in fire. I can feel your heat! You're making me burn with you.”
Black John whispered that hell is a gray, soulless place, covered in ice, and it has a constant north wind that cuts and slashes like a knife edge, and leaves deep, scarlet scars all over a man's naked body.
Then Black John said, his voice like a death knell, “Feel them, Ranger . . . feel the winds of Hades . . .”
And Cannan did.
He was hot before, but now he shivered as an icy blast hit him, and it cut like a saber and stank of sulfur from the lowest pits of hell.
“Hell is a wind!” Black John screamed. “A wind that blows bitter from Satan's mouth!”
“Liar!” Cannan yelled. “Liar, liar, your pants are on fire . . . in hell!”
Then suddenly he felt burning hot again.
Then cold.
Then hot.
And when he rode into the moon-splashed town of Last Chance, windows stared at him with blank, emotionless eyes . . . and all at once the ground cartwheeled up to meet him . . .
And then Hank Cannan felt nothing . . . nothing at all.