The Rider of Phantom Canyon

Joshua Strongheart said, “Listen, I am a Pinkerton agent and can show you all my badge and credentials.”

Luke Blackwell, whose family owned a plantation along the Peedee in the Sandhills of North Carolina, said, “I don't care what lie you wanna yarn. We found yer moccasin tracks outside our mine last night, an dey was leadin' away our horses. Dane, git a rope.”

The one to Blackwell's right started to take a step, and that was exactly what Joshua needed. The half-breed's hand whipped down to his Colt .45 Peacemaker, brought it out cocked, and fired. Flame stabbed from the barrel, and a big red spot on Dane's rib cage appeared as he folded like a suitcase. Strongheart's left hand fanned the hammer, and flame stabbed out again, and a bright red spot appeared in the middle of Luke's nose and the back of his head literally exploded. Strongheart's left hand fanned the hammer again, and that shot hit the left one, Foster, in the stomach a split second after he fired the bullet kicking up dirt between Strongheart's legs. The three bullets had been fired in less than a second, but the third did not hit the man squarely in the stomach, and Joshua fanned the hammer again and shot Foster again, dead center in the chest. He swayed and fell forward on his face, very dead.

The Strongheart Westerns

THE RIDER OF PHANTOM CANYON

THE INDIAN RING

BLOOD FEATHER

STRONGHEART

The Criminal Investigation Detachment Series

BAMBOO BATTLEGROUND

BROKEN BORDERS

CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DETACHMENT

DETACHMENT DELTA

BERKLEY

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 2016 by Don Bendell

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eBook ISBN: 9781101617182

First Edition: October 2016

Cover art by Bruce Emmett

Cover design by Lesley Worrell

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

—Virginia
Woolf

The character Joshua Strongheart is a true American hero that I have created, and this is the fourth and final book in the series. It is only appropriate that I dedicate this book to three very important heroes whom I truly love and who have played major roles in my own personal life. While writing this book, I went through a heartbreaking issue barely two years after losing my soul mate and wife of thirty-two and a half years, Shirley Bendell, whom I dedicated
The Indian Ring
to. I had several friends comforting me, but one friend truly helped me daily through the process, because she has been through so much trial by fire herself, and on an international stage, and emerged a major hero in more ways than one. She was personally honored as “a true national hero” by then-President George W. Bush, and she has been vilified by liberal media pundits and gossiped about by many of those whom she made look like fools. Jeanne Assam is a very close and trusted friend and confidant of mine. She is the courageous police officer who was forced by circumstance to engage in a shootout with serial killer Matthew Murray, the gunman who entered New Life Church in Colorado Springs on December 9, 2007, and opened fire on innocent, screaming churchgoers after he had already shot and killed four people near Denver, killing two and wounding two others. After sending an email warning and armed with
numerous weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition, Murray drove an hour south to New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where he killed two sisters and wounded their father and another in the parking lot. Then, he entered the church with seven thousand people at the service and opened fire inside. He was shooting a semiautomatic rifle with rounds spewing out as fast as he could pull the trigger. Jeanne, who was going to stay home while praying and fasting for several days, but felt “strongly inspired” that day to go to church, where she volunteered as a security officer, held fast in a hallway while others ran screaming. Jeanne prayed, then gave him a chance to lay down his weapons. He fired wildly. She was the only officer there who did not know that Matthew Murray had emailed and warned the church leadership he was coming to kill more, and that the Colorado Springs police were warned he was coming. They'd beefed up security, but he waited until some off-duty officers left. Jeanne did not run screaming. She never runs with the flock. Jeanne was, and is, a sheepdog, a professional police officer whose goal was always to serve and protect others. He could kill or wound no more, because armed only with a trust in God, the raw courage of a true warrior, and a 9mm pistol, she ran into Murray's withering rifle fire, shooting back at him with very accurate fire while moving forward at him, and hit him ten times with her own bullets, the last from only five feet away, killing him, saving countless lives, and she was covered with his arterial blood. Not
only is Jeanne one of my heroes, and a true, genuine law enforcement professional, she is a very close and trusted friend who was solidly there for me at a very critical and painful time in my life. That negative situation turned into a positive for me anyway, but could have been worse had Jeanne not been there uplifting me. Thank you, Jeanne. I love you very much, my beautiful friend.

The second person I honor herein is another of my heroes and a man with only one name, Ek—a name that means “manure.” A native belief was to give men such names to ward off evil spirits from the jungle. In 1968 and 1969, when I served in South Vietnam as a young U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret) first lieutenant, I lived with, trained, and fought alongside the Vietnam War's toughest fighters: the aboriginal nomadic Montagnard tribespeople. I lived with the Jeh tribe at a very remote place along the Laotian border called Dak Pek. Having a Montagnard lover, as well as a seven-year-old orphan named Plar whom I wanted to adopt, but who was raped and murdered by the Vietnamese, I developed a very close relationship and strong bond with the “Yards.” In short order, they assigned six bodyguards to me, who shadowed me everywhere that I went day and night. It was a great honor among them to be a bodyguard for me, because I was an American, and they were each supposed to die before I would. They called me “Trung-uy (First Lieutenant) Cowboy.” One of those bodyguards was a delightful, muscular little man named
Ek, who had five sons who fought for us, and a nephew who was also one of my bodyguards. In late summer of 1968, after our sister Special Forces A camp of Dak Seang came under siege, I commanded a 160-man joint operation with one hundred Montagnard strikers (mercenaries) from Dak Pek and sixty from Dak Seang. I was joined by two fellow Green Berets, who were sergeants. Dak Seang had been under siege and attack for days by a regiment of highly trained, well-equipped NVA (North Vietnamese Army) regulars. We got into a major battle west of Dak Seang, and I was wounded, with my right wrist bandaged up, unusable, and in an expedient sling. I was firing my own weapon left-handed, was directing a counterattack, and was also on the radio directing mortar, artillery fire, and, later, tactical air strikes onto the enemy positions. During the height of the battle, when NVA sprang a spider hole ambush with American Claymore mines and automatic weapons at point-blank range, Ek immediately ran in front of me to shield and protect me and was shot three times by an AK-47 and blasted by an American Claymore mine that literally blew the canteen off my hip, tore my camouflage tiger suit all over, and sent me flying backward onto my back. Ek took the whole blast in his legs and torso. I ended up giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the dying man while left-handed, while also administering IVs into each arm with serum albumin, a blood expander. He died as the skids of the medevac helicopter touched down. His large, muscular nephew,
another one of my bodyguards, had Claymore pellets in his shins and had his left eye shot out. I took my black cowboy kerchief and bandaged his eye and stuck and lit a cigar in his mouth during the fight. Ignoring his wounds, he bent over, picked up Ek, and proudly placed his uncle's body on the dustoff chopper, and then argued with me as I made him get on the medevac, too. He wanted to stay and guard me.

Right before Ek died, he looked up at me, smiling with yellow teeth, and weakly said, “Me go see Jesus now.”

Choking back tears, I said, “I will take care of your family. Tell Jesus I said hi.”

Thank you for saving my life, Ek. I love you.

Green Beret Colonel Roger Donlon, MOH, was the very first recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War. On July 6, 1964, then-Captain Roger Donlon was serving as the commanding officer of the U.S. Army Special Forces Detachment A-726 at Camp Nam Dong when a reinforced Viet Cong battalion suddenly launched a full-scale, predawn attack on the camp. The battle lasted five hours, and during the battle Roger was wounded many times, yet crawled from position to position, dragging wounded men from bunkers, carrying ammunition and weapons to defenders, administering first aid, and continually exposing himself to enemy fire while doing so. He kept getting wounded in the face, arms, legs, and abdomen but would not stop and take care of himself, only of his men. By daylight, the Viet Cong were defeated and retreated into the
jungle, leaving fifty-four dead behind and many weapons. In December of that year, President Lyndon Johnson awarded him the Medal of Honor in a White House ceremony.

When I was in Infantry Officers Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1966 and 1967, for six months we were mercilessly harassed physically, mentally, and emotionally as we tried to become second lieutenants in the U.S. Army. The only personal item we had that was not ready for inspection twenty-four hours per day was our locked footlockers. I kept a photograph of Roger taped inside the lid of my footlocker wearing his Medal of Honor neck ribbon, captain's bars, and green beret and looked at it and got inspired every time I opened that footlocker. Years later, in the early nineties, I met Roger and his lovely wife, Norma, as my wife, Shirley, and I sat with them at a banquet. I told him that story, and we became fast friends.

Then, about six years ago or so, Roger was asked to be the special guest of honor of a company of the Tenth Special Forces Group at the U.S. Army versus U.S. Air Force football game at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Norma fell ill shortly before the game, so Roger called me and asked me to go in his place as special guest of honor. I was so deeply humbled and appreciative of the first recipient of the Vietnam War to be awarded the coveted Medal of Honor asking me to stand in for him; words could not express my feelings. Roger is fighting another battle these days . . . Agent
Orange–related Parkinson's disease, while I fight Agent Orange–related type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Thank you for your heroism and inspiration and friendship, Roger. I love you, my friend.

This book is dedicated to these three heroes who have played such important roles in my life.

Don Bendell,
2016