Rope Burn

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Howden-Smyth’s gunmen took that to mean permanently. Revolvers flew out of holsters and swept up in hardened hands.

  Ace dived after Sughrue, tackled him around the waist, and drove him to the ground as shots roared and bullets ripped through the air where they had been a split second earlier.

  “Sergeant of the guard! Sergeant of the guard!” Slattery called as he hurried out onto the parade ground, too. “Arrest Lieutenant Olsen!”

  He thrust his pistol into the air, triggered three times, waited a beat, and fired twice more. The men they had left in the rocks ought to hear that signal and ride hard for the fort.

  The troops posted at Fort Gila didn’t know Slattery, but he wore an officer’s uniform and orders were orders, at least for some of them. They started across the parade ground toward the headquarters building, and some of the hired guns turned their shots in that direction. The cavalrymen fired back, since they were under attack. Most of the men had no real idea of what was going on, but in the blink of an eye, the parade ground was chaos, as clouds of powder smoke rolled over the hard-packed earth and bullets whipped back and forth in the air.

  The melee grew even worse when Olsen shouted at some of the soldiers near the headquarters building and they opened fire on their fellow troopers. Few of them knew for sure who was a friend and who was an enemy.

  Ace knew, though. As he tried to keep Sughrue from standing up in the storm of lead, he heard hoofbeats coming closer and a slug kicked up dirt beside him. Twisting, he saw the Indian tracker galloping in his direction, seemingly oblivious to all the wild shots screaming around him. The Indian seemed to have some sort of mystical protection against those bullets, too, since none of them found him or his horse.

  Ace rolled to the side to give himself a better angle and lifted the Colt. It roared and bucked in his hand, and he saw the Indian jerk back as the bullet punched into his chest. The tracker fired again with the rifle he held. Ace felt the slug’s hot breath on his cheek as he fired a second time.

  This shot hit the Indian above his right eye and snapped his head back. He dropped his rifle and tumbled backward out of the saddle, but one of his feet hung in the stirrup and the horse, crazed by the noise and the smell of smoke and blood, continued running, dragging the limp body alongside it.

  Ace turned his head and saw that Sughrue was up again. The major still had hold of his saber and waved it over his head as he charged toward the headquarters building. On the porch of that building, Eugene Howden-Smyth struggled with Evelyn, who must have run outside when the shooting started. She wore a simple white dress, not a wedding gown but one that would have served that purpose. As Ace watched, Howden-Smyth dragged her back inside while she screamed, “Father! Father!”

  Chance passed Ace at a run. He was headed for the headquarters building, too. Ace saw Marshal Hank Glennon drawing a bead on his brother. Shooting a lawman, even a crooked one, went against the grain for Ace, but Glennon gave him no choice. Ace came up on one knee and fired twice. Glennon dropped his gun and clutched at his chest with both hands. Crimson welled between his fingers as he crumpled to the porch.

  A few feet away, Judge Horace Bannister was on both knees, bent forward with his arms over his head as if to protect it from flying lead. He looked a little like he was praying, and maybe he was—praying for his own corrupt hide.

  Chance passed Major Sughrue. Olsen snapped a shot at him, but before Olsen could fire again, Ace triggered a shot at him that missed but chewed splinters from a porch post less than a foot from Olsen’s head. That made Olsen duck, and while he was doing that, Chance leaped to the porch and charged into the building after Howden-Smyth and Evelyn.

  By that time, Major Sughrue had reached the steps and started up them. Ace had one more round left in his gun, but he couldn’t fire because Sughrue was between him and Olsen.

  Ace saw the muzzle flashes as Olsen triggered again and again. He saw the major’s body jerk as the slugs hammered into him. But Sughrue never slowed down. With the saber thrust out in front of him, he rammed forward against Olsen and drove him back against the wall of the building behind him. Ace watched as both men stood there for several long seconds. Then Sughrue slowly slid down to the porch while Olsen stayed against the wall, pinned there by the steel that had gone all the way through his body and stuck in the adobe. Olsen made a few feeble twitches, and then his head drooped forward and he didn’t move again.

  Ace didn’t have time to look in that direction any longer, because at that moment another bullet sizzled past his face. Jerking his head to the right, he saw two of Howden-Smyth’s gun-wolves closing in on him. He recognized them as the pair that had been with Olsen’s detail when they attacked the Apache village. He didn’t recall their names, but one was tall and gaunt, the other stocky and wielding a shotgun. The cadaverous one was firing at Ace, but remembering that he had only one bullet left in the Colt and no time to reload, Ace targeted the shotgunner instead. The bullet slammed into the man’s midsection and doubled him over before he could fire the scattergun. Instead it slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground.

  Ace dropped the revolver and leaped up, then threw himself forward. As he landed, rolling, he snatched up the shotgun and had time to hope that the barrels hadn’t gotten fouled with dirt when the man dropped it. That was all he had time for, though, because the gaunt gunman was practically on top of him. A bullet from the man’s gun burned along Ace’s ribs.

  He tripped both triggers and as flame gouted from the twin muzzles, the double load of buckshot tore into the gunman at an angle, lifted him off his feet, and flung him backward. He landed as limp as a rag doll. The whole front of his torso was shredded.

  Ace tossed the empty shotgun aside, scooped up the revolver the gunman had dropped, and ran toward the headquarters building. From the corner of his eye, he saw the other members of Lieutenant Slattery’s detail galloping into the fort. Slattery was there to wave his arm and shout orders to them as the battle continued with Howden-Smyth’s hired guns and the troopers who were part of Olsen’s scheme.

  Inside the headquarters building, Chance heard Evelyn’s cries and followed them to the major’s office. As he charged past the aide’s desk and on into the office, he spotted Howden-Smyth and Evelyn on the other side of the room. The mine owner had one arm wrapped around her waist while she struggled and flailed at him. He had a gun in his other hand and was cursing bitterly at her.

  He saw Chance come into the room and turned the gun toward him. Flame geysered from the barrel. Chance veered away from the wind-rip of the bullet next to his ear, but he couldn’t risk a shot with Evelyn in the way.

  “Give it up, mister!” Chance yelled. “The War Department knows about your scheme. It’s over!”

  Howden-Smyth cursed him instead and swung the gun up for another shot. Evelyn stopped fighting wildly but grabbed his arm and jerked it toward her. Her teeth locked in the fleshy ball of his hand. Howden-Smyth howled in pain and hammered his other fist against her head, knocking her loose.

  But that knocked her out of the way, as well, and as Evelyn slumped to the floor, Chance had a clear shot. He and Howden-Smyth triggered so close together that the two reports sounded like one. The Englishman’s bullet smacked into the wall beside Chance while the slug from the young man’s gun left a smoldering hole in the breast pocket of Howden-Smyth’s expensive coat. Howden-Smyth stumbled forward, eyes widening in shock, pain, and disbelief.

  “You . . . you’ve shot me!” he gasped. “It . . . can’t be! I was . . . going to be . . . rich . . .”

  He pitched forward on his face and didn’t move again.

  Chance swung around fast as rapid footsteps sounded behind him. He held off on the trigger as he recognized his brother. “Ace!” he cried. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” Ace said, although his side hurt like blazes where that bullet had grazed him. “Howden-Smyth?”

  “Dead. Olsen?”

  “Dead,” Ace said. Unless the lieutenant had
figured out a way to survive being run through with a cavalry saber, and Ace didn’t think that was very likely. “Where’s Evelyn?”

  Chance stuck his gun back in his waistband and hurried over to the girl. Ace was right beside him. They helped her up, and as Ace looked over the white dress, he didn’t see any bloodstains on it.

  “You’re all right?” he asked her.

  “I . . . I think so.” She summoned up a weak smile. “Somehow, I’m not surprised to see you boys.”

  “We do seem to turn up wherever there’s trouble,” Chance said.

  Evelyn’s eyes widened as she remembered something. “My father!” she exclaimed. She started to hurry past Chance. “I have to find—”

  Ace shook his head, and Chance reached out to take hold of Evelyn and keep her from rushing out.

  “Let me go!” she cried. “I have to go to him!”

  “Miss Sughrue,” Ace said, “I’m sorry . . .”

  “No!” She looked at him in horror, and tears began to roll down her cheeks. “No!”

  Chance drew her into his arms and she buried her face against his chest as sobs shook her entire body.

  Ace heard someone else coming into the building and turned, raising the revolver he had picked up outside. He lowered it when he saw that the newcomer was Lieutenant Patrick Slattery. The lieutenant had a cut on his cheek that oozed blood, and another red stain on his left arm where a bullet appeared to have nicked him, but otherwise he seemed unharmed.

  “Miss Sughrue?” he asked.

  “She’s all right,” Chance said as he held Evelyn and patted her lightly on the back in a mostly futile effort to comfort her.

  “What about her father?” Ace asked.

  Grim-faced, Slattery replied, “Still alive, but fading fast.”

  Ace nodded to Chance. “Better take her out there.”

  Chance shepherded Evelyn out of the office. As Ace and Slattery followed, Ace said quietly, “For somebody who hadn’t seen any action, you seem to have acquited yourself pretty well, Lieutenant.”

  Slattery smiled a little. “There was hardly time to do anything else.”

  “I don’t hear any more shots. The fighting is over?”

  “It is,” Slattery replied with a nod. “Some of those hired gunmen working for Howden-Smyth survived, but they reached their horses and got away. The soldiers who fought on Olsen’s side surrendered when they saw that he was dead. I believe most of them regret their actions, but they’ll be spending time behind bars for them, anyway.” Slattery paused. “Do you think those gunmen will return?”

  “Not likely,” Ace said. “Especially once they hear that Howden-Smyth is dead. That breed doesn’t fight unless there’s a good payoff involved. Now there’s no more money for them to make here.”

  They stepped out onto the porch and saw that Evelyn was sitting on the planks with her father’s head and shoulders in her lap. The front of Sughrue’s uniform jacket was sodden with blood. He looked up into her crying face, blinked, and struggled to make his mouth form words.

  “Ev-Evelyn . . . I . . . I’m sorry . . . To think of . . . what I almost did . . .”

  “Don’t worry about that, Father,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “You hang on, we’ll help you—”

  “N-no! Don’t . . . want any help . . . Just want to . . . go on . . . be with my darling . . . Amelia . . . again . . . Evelyn . . . dear . . . know that . . . we’ll always . . . be looking down . . . and loving . . .”

  His last breath went out of him in a sigh. Evelyn clutched him and sobbed harder, but he was gone.

  Ace looked around, spotted Bannister standing at the other end of the porch looking sick and shaken, and went over to the portly jurist. Bannister saw him coming and a panicky look appeared on the judge’s face, as he was afraid Ace might shoot him.

  Instead, Ace said, “Listen to me, Bannister. You’re as big a crook as Olsen, Howden-Smyth, and Glennon were—”

  “No, I . . . I was just trying to cooperate with the army—” Bannister began protesting.

  “Shut up,” Ace said. “I don’t know if Howden-Smyth had any relatives, but if he didn’t, that gold mine ought to go to Evelyn. He intended to marry her, after all. I know that doesn’t give her any real legal standing—”

  “But I can arrange it,” Bannister said hastily. “The young lady will never want for anything again, I promise you. I’ll see to it.”

  Ace nodded. “Things will probably go easier for you if you do. You might even wind up not spending any time behind bars.”

  “Just leave it to me, Mr. Jensen.”

  “And as for that murder charge against me and my brother—”

  “Gone! Wiped out! Have no doubts about that, sir.”

  “Good, because if we ever find out that we’re fugitives from the law because of that, we’ll be hunting you up . . . and we won’t have anything to lose.”

  Bannister swallowed hard.

  “One more thing. Where are our horses and all the gear we left behind in Packsaddle?”

  “The horses are in the livery stable, and your things are, ah, still in Marshal Glennon’s office, I believe.”

  “Good.”

  Ace turned away from the judge and joined Chance and Slattery, who were watching from a discreet distance as Evelyn held the body of her dead father. He put a hand on Slattery’s shoulder and said quietly, “You’ll look after Miss Sughrue?”

  Slattery frowned in surprise. “Of course. But I thought the two of you—”

  “We’re going to take a couple of horses from the bunch that belonged to Howden-Smyth’s men so we can ride to Packsaddle, reclaim our own mounts, and get our gear from the marshal’s office. Isn’t that right, Chance?”

  Chance looked at Evelyn, sighed regretfully, and nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably the best thing to do. Evelyn needs somebody who doesn’t have the sort of restless nature I do.” He grinned at the young lieutenant. “Maybe somebody with a nice, stable career in the army.”

  Blinking rapidly, Slattery said, “Wait. What? I was hoping I could persuade the two of you to stay here and help me clean up this mess. Perhaps you might even be interested in enlisting—”

  He was talking to himself. The Jensen brothers were already striding away through the thinning haze of powder smoke.

  Keep reading for a special excerpt

  of The Backstabbers!

  National Bestselling Authors

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  and J. A. JOHNSTONE

  THE BACKSTABBERS

  A Red Ryan Western

  FIRST RULE OF JOHNSTONE COUNTRY:

  TRUST NO ONE

  No one knows the dangers of driving a stagecoach better than Red Ryan. Especially when the passenger’s a dead man, the payoff’s a gold mine, and the last stop is death . . .

  SECOND RULE: WATCH YOUR BACK

  Red Ryan should’ve known this job would be trouble. The first stop is a ghost town—in a thunderstorm—and the cargo is a coffin. But things start to look a little brighter when Red and his stage guard, Buttons Muldoon, deliver the corpse to a ranch run by the beautiful Luna Talbot and her gorgeous crew of former saloon girls. Luna asks the boys to help them find the Lucky Cuss Gold Mine, using a map tucked inside the dead man’s pocket. Buttons can’t refuse a pretty lady—or the lure of gold. But Red has a feeling they’re playing with fire. Especially when the map leads them straight into the crossfire of a ferocious range war and the path of a 400- pound load of pure evil known as Papa Mace Rathmore—and his backwoods clan of sadistic, kill-crazy hillbillies . . .

  Look for The Backstabbers on sale now.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Beneath a black sky torn apart by a raging thunderstorm, the sidelamps of the Patterson stage were lit as Red Ryan and Patrick “Buttons” Muldoon approached the town of Cottondale, some sixty miles east of El Paso, Texas.

  Buttons drew rein on the tired team and shouted over a roar of thunder, “Hell, Red, the place is in darkness. How come?” />
  “I don’t know how come,” the shotgun guard said. Red wore his slicker against the hammering rain. “The place is dead, looks like.”

  “Maybe they ran out of oil. Long trip to bring lamp oil all this way.”

  “And candles. They don’t have any candles.”

  “Nothing up this way but miles of desert,” Buttons said. “Could be they ran out of oil.”

  “You said that already.”

  “I know, and that’s still what I reckon. They ran out of oil and candles, and all the folks are sitting in their homes in the dark, sheltering from the rain.”

  “Or asleep.” Red said.

  Lightning scrawled across the sky like the signature of a demented god, and for a second or two, the barren brush country was starkly illuminated in sizzling light. Thunder bellowed.

  “Buttons, you sure we’re in the right place?” Red yelled. Rain drummed on the crown of his plug hat and the shoulders of his slicker. “Maybe this isn’t Cottondale. Maybe it’s some other place.”

  “Sure, I’m sure,” Buttons said. “Abe Patterson’s wire said Cottondale is east of El Paso and just south of the Cornudas Mountains. Well, afore this storm started, we seen the mountains, so that there ahead of us must be the town.”

  Red said. “What the hell kind of town is it?”

  “A dark town,” Buttons said. “Remember the first time we seen that New Mexican mining burg, what was it called? Ah, yeah, Buffalo Flat. That looked like a dark town until you seen it close. Tents. Nothing but brown tents.”

  “With people in them, as I recollect.” Red said. “Well, drive on in and let’s get out of this rain and unhitch the team.”

  “Yeah, the horses are tuckered,” Buttons said. “They’ve had some hard going, this leg of the trip.”