Hell's Gate

by William W. Johnstone

  “You were just too slow on the draw, fat man,” Hart said. “That happens sometimes.”

  The marshal stepped outside and faced the crowd, including, he noted, Hogan Lord. Hart held up his hands to silence the whispers and said, “Earlier today Tobias Fynes murdered Estelle Redway by shoving the blade of a letter opener into her neck.”

  There were cries of “Shame!” and someone yelled, “Murder, by God.”

  Again Hart silenced the crowd and said, “According to the evidence I found inside, when Dr. Weller confronted Fynes with his crime he drew down on her, but he was too slow. Dr. Weller, a brave woman, stood her ground, got her work in and shot him dead. As far as I’m concerned it was a clear case of self-defense.”

  This drew cries of “Huzzah!” and “Served him right!” Tobias Fynes was not a well-liked man in Mansion Creek.

  “We need the undertaker here,” Marshal Hart said. “One of you men see to it.”

  The crowd dispersed and the bank clerks hesitantly reentered the bank building and Hart immediately deputized a couple of loafers and told them to stand guard on the safe until he returned.

  “Remember, boys, it’s the town’s money so guard it well,” he said.

  As the lawman crossed the street in the direction of the doctor’s surgery, Hogan Lord caught up with him and Hart stopped, his hand dropping close to his gun. “Am I going to have trouble with you, Hogan?”

  Lord shook his head, smiled and said, “Tobias Fynes was left-handed, Marshal. But don’t worry, I fixed that little oversight for you.”

  “Damn, I never thought of that,” Hart said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Sam Flintlock was with Dr. Theodora Weller when Marshal Slim Hart walked into the surgery. As always the lawman looked gloomy, like a perpetual bearer of bad news.

  “Yes, I killed him, Marshal,” Theodora said. She let tobacco and papers fall from her fingers. “And I’d do it again if I had to.”

  “It was self-defense, Doc,” Hart said. “The murderer Tobias Fynes drew down on you and you had to defend yourself.”

  The woman was shocked. “But that’s not how—”

  “The murderer Tobias Fynes drew down on you and you had to defend yourself,” Hart said. “Doc, how many times do I have to say it?”

  Flintlock said, “Yup, that’s how it was, Doctor. A clear-cut case of self-defense.”

  Then, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, Hart said, “How is O’Hara?”

  “I’m just fine, Marshal.”

  O’Hara stood in the waiting room doorway. His hands and most of his face were bandaged but his eyes were bright and he was solid on his feet.

  Theodora, relief evident in her voice, said, “I badly need another drink. Anyone else?”

  Heads nodded and Flintlock said, “I guess that’s all of us, Doc.”

  “Wait, there’s one more.”

  Hogan Lord stepped into the room and Flintlock immediately tensed, something the shootist noticed. He smiled and said, “I’m riding on, Sam. I hope we part as friends.”

  “Sure we do . . . until the next time,” Flintlock said.

  Lord laughed, raised the glass Theodora had just given him and he said, “I’ll drink to that.”

  “And the rest of us,” Hart said.

  Theodora looked around at the three men and in a small, weak voice with a passable English accent, said, “God bless us, every one.”

  Only Lord knew where the quote came from. He smiled but remained silent.

  * * *

  Estelle Redway and Tobias Fynes were buried on the same day in the small Mansion Creek cemetery but their last resting places were far apart. Estelle’s funeral was well attended but, according to the Apache County Herald, Fynes had no mourners. That same morning Ruth Fynes gave up her struggle, turned her face to the wall and died. Dr. Weller would later say that she died with a smile on her lips.

  Flintlock and O’Hara rode out the following day and old Barnabas sat on top of the church steeple and watched them go, slowly shaking his head.

  O’Hara’s burns had not completely healed and he and Flintlock agreed that they should take it easy for the next few days. “Then once we get on a good trail south we’ll be well on our way,” Flintlock said.

  “Promise me one thing,” O’Hara said, drawing rein on his paint.

  “Name it,” Flintlock said.

  “When we reach the Painted Desert we mind our own business and stay out of other people’s troubles,” O’Hara said.

  “I’m with you on that,” Flintlock said. “Yes, from now on we mind our own damned business.”

  “Do you mean that, Sam?”

  “Yup, every word of it,” Flintlock said. “Trust me.”

  Johnstone Justice. What America Needs Now.

  Bestselling authors William W. and J. A. Johnstone continue the wild, epic saga of Tim Colter with the building of the transcontinental railroad—and the making of the American Dream . . .

  Twenty-two years have passed since Tim Colter and his family were ambushed on the Oregon Trail, forcing the young boy to find an unlikely ally in one-eyed mountain man Jed Reno. Now a widowed deputy U.S. marshal and Civil War veteran, Colter is finally ready to remarry and settle down—until a dangerous new assignment becomes a life-or-death struggle for the soul of a town and the heart of its people . . .

  The Union Pacific Railroad is laying down tracks connecting the great Northwest to the rest of the country. But two rival factions have set their sights on the town of Violet—aka Violence—to gain control of the rails. It’s Colter’s job to tame the rampant greed and rising tensions. But to do it, he’ll need to deputize his trusted old friend Jed Reno—and wage a savage new war that will determine the fate of the Dakota Territory and the future of a nation.

  THE EDGE OF VIOLENCE

  A TIM COLTER WESTERN

  Coming in October 2017 wherever Pinnacle Books are sold.

  Live Free. Read Hard. www.williamjohnstone.net

  CHAPTER ONE

  Decades ago—by Jupiter, a lifetime, an eternity—Jed Reno had laughed at Jim Bridger. When the old (by mountain-man standards) fur trapper, scout, and guide had teamed up with Louis Vasquez to build a trading post on the Blacks Fork of the Green River, Jed Reno had jokingly told Bridger that Bridger’s nerves had finally frayed. That Bridger was selling out. That he was calling it quits. That, pushing forty years old, he was too long in the tooth to be traipsing over the Rocky Mountains, trapping beaver and fighting the weather, the wilds, and the Indians. While sharing a jug of Taos Lightning or some other forty-rod whiskey seasoned with snakeheads, tobacco, and strychnine, Reno had slapped Bridger on the back, and told him, “Well, you just enjoy your life of leisure. I’m sure you’ll be richer than a St. Louis whiskey drummer with this here venture of yours.”

  “Runnin’ a store, ol’ hoss,” Bridger had told him, “ain’t as easy as you think it is.”

  “Balderdash,” Reno had said. Damnation, if Jim Bridger wasn’t right.

  As a bullet blew apart the copper-lined tin corn boiler, Reno ducked beneath the somersaulting axe handle that smashed the shelves behind him, sending metal-backed mirrors, salt and pepper shakers, scissors, axe blades, lanterns, baskets, jugs, matches, soaps, knives, forks, beads, containers of linseed oil, pine tar, and tins of tobacco flying every which way. He landed on the pile of pillow-ticking fabric and the woolen blankets he had not gotten around to stacking on the shelves, and he had to be thankful for that. At seventy years old, or something like that (Reno kept bragging that he had stopped counting after fifty), the onetime fur trapper wasn’t as game as he used to be.

  Which is why he had followed in Bridger’s footsteps, and set up his own trading post about a dozen or so years ago on Clear Creek.

  “You done a smart thing,” Bridger had told him. “Make some money. Watch people go by. Drink whiskey. Smoke yer pipe. Easy livin’.”

  A hatchet fell with the axe handle, and the blade almost cut off Reno�
��s left ear. A brass percussion capper bounced off his eyebrow. His good eye. An inch lower, and Jed Reno figured he might be wearing leather patches over both eyes.

  Easy livin’? A body could get killed running a store.

  He heard boots thudding across the packed earthen floor. His left hand reached up, found the handle to the hatchet that had almost split his head open, and jerked it free from the blankets and bolts of pillow ticking just as the bearded figure appeared on the other side of the counter.

  A big man, bigger than even Reno, wearing fringed buckskin britches, black boots like those a dragoon or horse soldier might be wearing, collarless shirt of hunter green poplin, garnet waistcoat, and a battered black hat, flat-brimmed and flat-crowned. He also wore a brace of flintlock pistols in a yellow sash around his belly. One of those pistols was in his right hand.

  Reno saw the hammer strike forward just as he flung the hatchet. Powder flashed in the pistol’s pan, the barrel belched flame and smoke, and a .54-caliber lead ball embedded itself in the brown trade blanket rolled up on Reno’s right.

  “Horatio!” a voice yelled. Reno could just make out the voice as he sprang up, fell forward, and crawled toward the soon-to-be-dead Horatio, whose only replies were gurgles as he lay on his back as blood spurted from his neck like water from an artesian well.

  The voice swore, and then barked at the third man who had entered Reno’s trading post: “Sam, he’s goin’ fer Horatio’s pistols. Get’m. Quick.”

  This time, Jed Reno heard clearly. The ringing from Horatio’s pistol shot had died in Reno’s ears. He dived the last couple of feet, ignoring the lake of blood that was ruining toothbrushes and staining wrapped bars of soap and the beads a Shoshone woman kept bringing him to trade for pork and flour, which, in turn, Reno sold to wayfarers from New York and Pennsylvania and Ohio and even Massachusetts who had been traveling so far that many of the ladies thought those beads from Prussia or someplace were prettier than rubies and garnets.

  Reno jerked the second pistol from the dead man’s sash. Horatio, Reno knew, was dead now because the blood no longer pulsed, but merely coagulated. Footsteps pounded, but not only coming from Sam’s direction. The Voice was charging, too, and Jed Reno had only one shot in the flintlock he had jerked from Horatio’s body. His left hand gripped the butt of the. 54 Horatio had fired just moments before.

  Sam appeared on the other side of the counter, where Reno had been refilling a barrel with pickled pig’s feet when the three men entered his store.

  Sam was the oldest of the rogues, with silver hair, a coonskin cap, and dark-colored, drop-front broadfall britches—which must have gone out of fashion back when Reno was a boy in Bowling Green, Kentucky—muslin shirt, red stockings, and ugly shoes. A man would have guessed him to be a schoolmaster or some dandy if not for the double-barrel shotgun he held at his hips.

  The flintlock bucked in Reno’s right hand, and just before the eruption of white smoke obscured Reno’s vision, he saw the shocked look on Sam’s face as the bullet hit him plumb center, just below his rib cage. With a gasp, Sam instantly pitched backward as if his feet had slipped on one of the bar-pullers, tompions, nuts, bolts, and vent and nipple picks that lay scattered on the floor. He touched off both barrels of the shotgun.

  One barrel had been loaded with buckshot, the other with birdshot—as if he had been going out hunting for either deer or quail—and the blast blew a hole through the sod roof, and dirt and grass and at least one mouse began pouring through the opening, dirtying and eventually covering the ugly city shoes the now-dead Sam wore on his feet.

  Reno rolled over, just as The Voice leaped onto the top of the counter. The pistol in Reno’s left hand—the one he had jerked off the floor near the blood-soaked corpse of Horatio—sailed and struck The Voice in his nose. Reno caught only a glimpse of the revolving pistol The Voice held, because as soon as the flintlock crashed against the bandit’s face, blood was spurting, The Voice was cursing, and then he was disappearing, crashing against the floor on the other side of the counter. Reno came up, hurdled the counter, and caught an axe handle on his ankles.

  This time, Reno cursed, hit the floor hard, and rolled over, but not fast enough, for The Voice jumped on top of him and locked both hands around Jed Reno’s throat.

  Now that he had a close look at the gent, The Voice had more than just a rich baritone.

  He had the look of a man-killer. Scars pockmarked his bronzed face, clean-shaven except for long Dundreary whiskers, and his eyes were a pale, lifeless blue. Those eyes bulged, and the man ground his tobacco-stained teeth. The nose had been busted two or three times, including just seconds ago by Horatio’s empty. 54-caliber pistol. Blood poured from both nostrils and the gash on the nose’s bridge. One of The Voice’s earlobes was missing—as if it had been bitten off in a fight. He seemed a wiry man, all sinew, no fat, and his hands were rock-hard, the fingers like iron, clasping, pushing down against his throat, and cutting off any air.

  He wore short moccasins, high-waisted britches of blue canvas with pewter buttons for suspenders that he did not don; a red-checked flannel shirt that was mostly covered by the double-breasted sailor’s jacket with two rows of brass buttons on the front and three on the cuffs. The black top hat The Voice had worn had fallen off at some point during the scuffle.

  But he was a little man, no taller than five-two, and a stiff wind—which was predictably normal in this country—would likely blow him over.

  Jed Reno figured he was forty years older than The Voice, but he had more than a foot on the murdering cuss, and probably seventy pounds. Jed kept rolling over, and The Voice rolled with him. They rolled like the pickle barrel Sam had knocked over with his right arm as he fell to the floor in a heap and ruined the store’s roof. Rolled against an overturned keg of nails and knocked over the brooms until they hit the spare wagon wheels leaning against the wall.

  The Voice came up, pushing off one wagon wheel, then flinging another at Reno, who blocked it with his forearm, and sat up, slid over, and leaped to his feet.

  Staggering back toward the sacks of flour, beans, and coffee, The Voice wiped his mouth. The lower lip had been split. Reno tasted blood on his lips, but he didn’t know if it belonged to him, The Voice, or the late Horatio.

  “You one-eyed bastard.” The Voice had lost much of its musical tone. More of a wheeze. But the little man was game.

  He jerked a bowie knife that must have been sheathed behind his back. The blade slashed out, but Reno leaped back. Again. The Voice was driving him, until Reno found himself against another counter.

  The Voice’s lips stretched into a gruesome, bloody smile.

  The knife’s massive, razor-sharp blade ripped through the flannel shirt; and had Reno not sucked in his stomach, he would be bleeding more than The Voice about this time. The blade began slashing back, but Reno had found the chains—those he sold to emigrants for their wagon boxes—and slashed one like a blacksnake whip. Somehow, it caught The Voice’s arm between wrist and elbow, and The Voice wailed as the bones in the arm snapped, and the big knife thudded on the floor.

  As The Voice staggered back, Reno felt the chain slip from his hand. He was tuckered out, too, and, well, it had been several moons since he had engaged in a tussle like this one.

  The chain rattled as it fell to the floor, and The Voice turned and ran for the door.

  Sucking in air, Reno charged, lowered his head and shoulder, and slammed into the thin man’s side. They went through the open doorway, over what passed as a porch, and smashed through the pole where the bandits had tied their horses. Those geldings whinnied, reared, whined, and pounded at the two men’s bodies. One, a black gelding, pulled loose the rest of the smashed piece of pine and galloped toward the creek. One fell in the dirt, rolled over, came up—and ran north, leaving its reins in the dirt and wrapped around the broken pole. The other backed up, reared, fell over, and came up. Reno couldn’t tell which way he ran.

  He was on his knees, spitting out dir
t and blood, while wiping his eyes. He tried to stand, to find The Voice, when he tasted dirt and leather and sinew and felt his head snap back. Down he went, realizing that The Voice had kicked him. He landed, rolled, was trying to come up, when The Voice turned his body into a missile. His head caught Reno right in the stomach. Breath left his lungs. He caught a glimpse of the cabin he called a store flash past him as he was driven into the column that held up the covering over the porch.

  The railing snapped. The covering collapsed, spilling more earth, debris, two rats, and a bird’s nest. The two men kept moving. Past the cabin. Over dried horse apples. A fist caught Reno in the jaw. Then another. The Voice packed a wallop. Reno brought up his arms in a defensive maneuver, leaving his midsection open. A fist—it had to be The Voice’s left, for his right arm was busted—hit twice. Three times. Reno fell against the woodpile, rolled over, hit the chopping block, and wondered if he had just busted a couple of ribs.

  “Son of a bitch!” The Voice roared.

  Reno blinked away sweat, blood, dirt, and dust. He saw the bandit standing next to the pile of firewood. He had a sizable chunk of wood in his left hand. Stepped forward, raising the club over his head.

  Reno found the axe buried in the chopping block. Jerking it free, he flung it as he dived out of the way of the descending piece of wood.

  He lay there, panting, played out, wondering why the devil The Voice didn’t just finish him off. But that instant of defeatism vanished quickly. Reno rolled over, came up, and spit. He looked left, and then right, and saw his cabin, saw the woodpile, and finally his eyes focused on the moccasins and the ends of the blue pants on the dirt.

  Neither the feet nor the legs were moving.