Have Brides, Will Travel

by William W. Johnstone

  Bo felt a bullet pluck at his coat. Another sizzled past his ear on the other side. He centered his Colt on Mendoza’s chest and triggered three shots. The gun barrel came up a little with each round, so the three bullets marched up the bandit chief’s breastbone, shattering it on their way to smashing his spine. Mendoza went down.

  Bo rushed along the porch and kicked the fallen revolvers out of Mendoza’s reach, just in case. Mendoza was too far gone to be much of a threat, though. He would be dead within seconds.

  But not before he rasped out, “Dyson! He was . . . behind it all! Promised to . . . free me . . . if I helped him rob the town . . . blind.”

  Bo hunkered beside the dying bandit and said, “Why are you telling me this, Mendoza?”

  Blood leaked from both corners of Mendoza’s mouth as he smiled.

  “Because if I die . . . tonight . . . I want Dyson to suffer . . . along with me. He cannot . . . get away with . . .”

  Mendoza’s final breath rattled from his throat.

  Bo stood up. He figured Forbes Dyson was in the hotel. As soon as he had reloaded the Colt, he went inside.

  Several of the ladies exclaimed in relief when he entered the dining room.

  Scratch came toward him and said, “Bo, are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Came close a few times, but I managed to dodge the reaper again.”

  “He’s a nimble ol’ son of a gun, ain’t he?” Scratch said with a grin. “But we’re faster.”

  Bo spotted Dyson on the other side of the room. The saloon man’s clothes were disheveled, and his hair was awry. This had been a rough night for him.

  It was about to get rougher.

  “Scratch, Craddock, move the ladies over there by the wall,” Bo said.

  Scratch knew his trail partner well enough to be aware instantly that something was wrong. He also knew Bo wouldn’t give an order like that unless it was important, so he turned immediately and said, “Ladies, move back over there.”

  “Creel, what’s going on?” Craddock demanded.

  Bo nodded toward Dyson, who was staring at him in apparent confusion. “There’s the man responsible for all hell breaking loose in Silverhill tonight.”

  “What?” Dyson said. “What in blazes are you talking about, Creel?”

  “I ran into Jaime Mendoza outside,” Bo said, his voice flat and hard. “You probably heard the shots. Mendoza confirmed something I already suspected. You planned this whole thing, Dyson.”

  “The . . . the competition for the mail-order brides? I never made any secret of that—”

  “No, I mean getting the town all stirred up and using that as a cover for Bouma and his men to rob the freight office of that silver shipment. Bouma’s dead, in case you’re wondering, and nobody got away with the silver. Some of the other businesses probably got cleaned out, but at least now you won’t be able to swoop in and take them over. That’s what you were planning to do, isn’t it? Turn Silverhill and this corner of the territory into your own private kingdom?”

  Dyson sneered at him and said, “You can’t prove any of that! You’d take the word of a . . . a filthy greaser bandit? Anyway, you said he’s dead and Bouma’s dead. There’s nobody to back up your crazy story, Creel.”

  Bo smiled and shook his head slowly. “I never said Mendoza was dead, just that Bouma is. And I think Mendoza is kind of bitter about the whole thing.”

  It was a lie, but it worked. Dyson stiffened, ripped out a curse, and clawed under his coat. Bo had pouched his iron when he came in, but he drew now as Dyson yanked out a pistol. Bo summoned all the speed he possessed, because he didn’t want Dyson even getting off a shot. In a room crowded with innocents like this one, there was no telling where a stray slug might land.

  Bo’s Colt roared, and Dyson’s head snapped back, with a red-rimmed hole in the middle of the forehead. The bullet had drilled cleanly into his brain. He folded up, his dreams blasted out of his head, along with a good-sized chunk from the back of his skull.

  Now the battle of Silverhill really was over.

  * * *

  The next day, Bo and Scratch were taking it easy on the hotel porch when Rance Plummer rode up, along with the cowboys from the SJ spread.

  The Texans stood up and moved to the railing.

  Bo said, “Are you headed back to the ranch?”

  “Somebody’s got to run the place,” Plummer answered with a grin. “We might could stay another day or two, though, if you need any help cleanin’ up the mess around here.”

  “No, you go ahead,” Bo told him. “Everybody’s pitching in. Silverhill will be back to normal in a few days, I expect.”

  “Except there’s nobody to run the biggest saloon in town,” Plummer pointed out.

  “I guess that’ll be up to Dyson’s heirs, if he’s got any. One of the lawyers over in El Paso who works for the mine owners will be looking into that.”

  “Until then,” Scratch said, “I reckon the other saloons in town will just have to take up the slack.”

  Plummer rested his hands on the saddle horn and leaned forward.

  “What about the young ladies? Steve, here, won the horse race, you know.” Plummer nodded toward one of the cowboys. “He don’t want to leave if he’s got a claim on a bride.”

  “Aw, I, uh, I never said it quite like that,” the young puncher stumbled, clearly embarrassed.

  “All that’s been set aside,” Bo said. “Dyson never acted in good faith. But the ladies have agreed to stay here awhile and maybe meet some of the fellas and see what happens.” Bo shrugged. “You never know when there might be some courting going on.”

  “See?” Plummer said to the young cowboy called Steve. “Maybe you can ride back over here sometime and find out how things stand.”

  With that, the foreman turned his horse, lifted a hand in farewell, and urged his mount into motion.

  Scratch called, “So long, Rance!” as the crew from the SJ rode away.

  “You didn’t tell him that Craddock is bein’ stubborn enough to hang around and try to convince Cecilia to marry him,” Scratch commented.

  “He didn’t ask,” Bo said.

  “One more thing I been wonderin’ about . . . What’s Miss Hampshire gonna do? She ain’t said nothin’ else about goin’ home, leastways not that I’ve heard.”

  “She has to wait here for the next stagecoach.”

  “You think she’s gonna be on it when it rolls out?”

  “I don’t know,” Bo said as he thought about Susan Hampshire. “It’ll be sort of interesting to see.”

  * * *

  On a rise a mile south of Silverhill, half a dozen men sat on horseback and looked toward the settlement.

  Guadalupe Sanchez said, “Jaime is dead. What are we going to do now?”

  “We could still raid the town,” another bandit suggested.

  “And get killed for our trouble?” Philip Armbruster said. “There are too many good fighting men there. Those two old Texans are there, and they seem to be worth a dozen men each.”

  Armbruster no longer wore the peasant garb. His wounded shoulder was bandaged, and his right arm was in a makeshift sling. Sanchez had found some trousers for him, with embroidery down the legs, and he wore a loose white shirt and a serape thrown over his shoulders. A gray sombrero was on his head.

  One of the men, a wizened old-timer named Tomás, had a lot of experience patching up bullet wounds, and he had assured Armbruster that his shoulder would heal. No bones were broken. The bullet had passed cleanly through muscle. For now, he wouldn’t be able to write, but that would come back to him.

  He might even start learning how to use a gun.

  Becoming aware that the bandits were all looking at him, Armbruster realized they were waiting for him to tell them what to do. Officially, Sanchez might be their leader now, but the man was rather dull mentally and would be open to suggestions.

  “Why don’t we head back south of the border?” Armbruster said. “We can lie low for a bit and
make plans, perhaps recruit a few more men. Jaime wanted to lead a rebellion against the oppressive government in Mexico City, didn’t he?”

  “He always said that he did,” Sanchez replied, “but I think mostly he wanted to steal and have the señoritas think he was a big hero.”

  Armbruster mused for a moment. It was a shame about Luella, but for now, he had to put his feelings for her aside. Bigger ideas had come to him.

  “Maybe we’ll do it for real.”

  Sanchez stared at him and said, “A revolution? You mean it?”

  “Why not? We should give it a try, anyway.” With that, Armbruster turned his horse toward the south and added, “Ándale!”

  As they spurred away, he thought about all the bizarre twists of fate that had left him, a gringo reporter, as the de facto leader of a gang of Mexican bandidos and would-be revolutionaries. It was almost beyond belief. . . .

  But what a book this was going to make!

  TURN THE PAGE FOR AN EXCITING PEVIEW!

  A new kind of hero in the Old West tradition, Perley Gates is as honest and good as his heavenly name. But don’t ’t make him mad. Because when Perley Gates gets mad, people get hurt.

  Once every year, Perley Gates and his brothers lead the Triple-G crew on its annual cattle drive. It’s a treacherous journey along the Great Western Trail, with a herd of two thousand cows on one side and many opportunities for trouble on the other.

  This year, trouble shows up in the form of a beautiful young woman, her little baby, and her bizarre traveling companion, a colorful old cuss who goes by the name of Possom Smith. They’re heading to a settlement called Butcher Bottom—and risking their necks to get there. Perley being the gentleman he is offers to escort the trio to their destination. But there are a few minor details they “forgot” to tell him . . .

  The woman is a widow whose husband had enemies. The old man is hiding a small fortune that might get them killed. And Perley is stuck in the middle trying to decide who’s good, who’s bad—and who deserves to die first . . .

  National Bestselling Authors

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE and J. A. JOHNSTONE

  BULLETS DON’T ARGUE

  A PERLEY GATES WESTERN

  Live Free. Read Hard.

  www.williamjohnstone.net

  On sale now, wherever Pinnacle Books are sold.

  Visit us at www.kensingtonbooks.com.

  CHAPTER 1

  Emma Slocum paused, thinking she had heard something outside the cabin. She tucked the blanket back over the sleeping baby in the crib her husband had built. It was late, past time when she had expected her husband to be home. He was often late to come home at night, but this was later than usual. Pausing again when she heard what she was sure was the sound of a horse approaching the cabin, she went at once to the door. “Dan?” she called out, wondering why he didn’t go straight to the barn to unsaddle his horse as he usually did.

  “It ain’t Dan,” Possum Smith answered her, “and we got to get outta here just as fast as we can.”

  She recognized the rider then as he approached the cabin, leading two horses, one of them saddled. Confused by his alarming statement, she asked, “Possum? Where’s Dan?”

  “Dan’s been shot,” Possum said, as he stepped down from the saddle, “and we’ve got to get movin’, ’cause he’s comin’ after us.”

  Stunned by his frank and unemotional tone, she questioned, “What are you talkin’ about? Who’s comin’ after us? Possum, where’s my husband?”

  “Emma, he ain’t comin’ home. Dan’s dead, shot by that yellow, lowdown dog, Jack Pitt. And you gotta get your stuff together while I hitch up the wagon! Just grab whatever you can’t do without, ’cause I don’t know how much time we’ve got before Pitt figures out where I went. Grab all your clothes and anything you need to cook with, ’cause we ain’t comin’ back.” Horrified, Emma was caught in a fit of shock, unable to move, while her brain struggled to make sense of what she was hearing. “Emma, you and your baby are in danger!” Possum pleaded when he saw her confusion. “You’ve got to move!”

  “Dan’s dead?” she gasped, not willing to accept it, even though she had feared this day might come. “It’s that damn money, isn’t it? Where are we going?” she asked frantically.

  “I don’t know,” Possum answered impatiently, “just away from here. Now hurry!” Pitt had never been to Dan’s cabin, but he knew it was somewhere along this creek, and it wouldn’t take him long to find it. Finally impacted by the gravity of the situation, she spun around quickly, trusting that he was telling her the truth. Fearing for her and her baby’s safety, she hurried to do as Possum had instructed with no time to grieve her husband’s death.

  Possum ran to the shed and corral that served as a barn and hitched the two horses there up to the wagon. When that was done, he took a pitchfork and went to work on a pile of hay in the corner of the shed until he uncovered a canvas bag. After a quick look inside it, to make sure the contents were still there, he shoved it under the wagon seat. Then he took another look around to see if there was anything else he might need. Nothing more than a coil of rope, an axe, and a short-handled shovel caught his eye, so he threw them in the wagon, as well as the canvas cover for the wagon bed. Unwilling to take any more time, he climbed up into the seat and drove the wagon up to the front door of the cabin. A pile of blankets and bedding told him that Emma was following his instructions. He jumped down from the seat and threw the items she had gathered into the wagon. Then he went inside to help her gather more. When they had loaded all the pots and pans and what food supplies she had, there was only room for one more item. It came down to a choice between the one rocking chair and the baby’s crib. She was reluctant to leave the crib that Dan had built, but on Possum’s advice, she decided to take the rocking chair. “That young’un’s gonna grow outta that crib before you turn around twice, and you can rock him to sleep in that chair,” Possum said.

  He helped her up on the wagon seat, then handed the baby up to her. Before leaving, he went back inside to make sure the fire in the fireplace was dying out. As he explained to Emma when he climbed up into the wagon, it was an abandoned shack when Dan had found it. So he thought it only right to make sure it was still standing when the next drifter found it. With his two horses and Dan’s extra horse tied to the back of the wagon, Possum gave the horses a slap of the reins, and they crossed over the shallow creek and headed out toward the road, a quarter mile away.

  A big full moon had already lifted above the far horizon by the time they struck the road to Dodge City. Possum was anxious to head south on the road in case Jack Pitt decided he might have gone to Dan’s cabin instead of his own shack east of town. Right now, he wasn’t sure if he was happy to see a full moon or not. It made it easier to avoid some of the rough spots on the well-traveled road, but it might also make it easier for Pitt to pick out his tracks, if he did come this way, looking for them. He glanced over at the frightened young woman frequently, somewhat amazed that she was now quietly accepting this nightmarish interruption in her evening.

  Even though she had seemingly accepted this invasion into her home, Emma was not at all ready to dismiss her husband’s sudden death so easily. She and Dan had not known Possum Smith for very long, but she trusted the usually mild-mannered old man, who had been part of a three-man partnership with her husband and Jack Pitt. Certainly older than either of his two partners, it was difficult to guess Possum’s age, and he never volunteered it. From the age lines in his weathered face, and the long gray braid of hair resting between his shoulder blades, it was obvious that he had ridden many trails in his life. She trusted him because Dan had trusted him. It was Jack Pitt that both Dan and Possum had been wary of, and now their distrust had evidently been justified. From the very beginning, Emma had feared that the money was going to bring bad luck in some form, but she was not prepared to deal with it when now it had arrived in the form of her husband’s death. “Should we have turned the money over to the authoritie
s?” she suddenly asked Possum. “Maybe we should do it now.”

  “No, no,” Possum was quick to reply. “It’s been too long, and we’d be held accountable for our share and Pitt’s share, too. We shoulda known Pitt wouldn’t keep our agreement not to spend any of that money till it had all blown over. Now he’s wantin’ to take our share. I knew it was bound to happen. Dan did, too. We both shoulda skipped town as soon as we found it.” He turned his head toward her and added, “Besides, you’re gonna need that money now that Dan’s gone. And the bank ain’t gonna miss it.”

  He turned his attention back to the horses, encouraging them to maintain the pace he had called for. Should have known better, he thought, trying to help the law. He thought back on that day, when the bank was robbed, and he had volunteered to join the sheriff’s posse. He and Dan had decided, “What the hell . . .” They sure as hell weren’t busy doing anything else, so they joined half a dozen other volunteers and chased after the two bank robbers. West along the banks of the Arkansas River, they had raced, steadily closing the distance between them and the outlaws until they split up. He and two other men, Dan Slocum and Jack Pitt, broke off and chased the man south of the river. They caught up with the outlaw when his horse stumbled over a small gully and broke a leg. The rider was tossed, landing on his back. When the three posse men pulled up to him, he was still flat on his back. Possum ordered him to put his hands up, but before he had gotten the last word out, Jack Pitt shot him. “He was goin’ for his gun,” Possum remembered Pitt saying. That was his introduction to Pitt. He knew now that it should have been a warning as to the kind of man he was. There was a long moment of conscience upon finding the canvas money bag. With no one to witness it, Pitt immediately suggested they should keep it. “We can say there wasn’t no money on him,” he said. “Ain’t no way anybody can say there was.”

  Possum remembered the glances he and Dan had exchanged. It was obvious that both of them were hesitant to go along with Pitt’s suggestion. After all, it would make them as guilty of robbery as the man Pitt had just killed. At the time, however, a sack full of money was too much to turn their backs on. Times were tight and money was scarce. There was also the possibility of getting the same medicine the dead outlaw had received from Pitt, had they not agreed to his proposition. So they had hidden the money and carried the outlaw’s body back to join up with the sheriff and the rest of the posse.