Snake River Slaughter

by William W. Johnstone

“We’ve got to earn it though. We’re going to have to take the herd.”

  Burnett shook his head. “How are we going to do that?” he asked. “We tried it last night, remember?”

  “I made a mistake,” Sherman admitted. “We attacked them on their ground, and they were dug in and waiting for us. And even if we had taken the herd, we would have had to bring it in. Now they are going to bring the herd to us, and when they do, we will be ready for them.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “Mr. Gilmore?”

  George Gilmore looked up from his desk and saw one of the soiled doves who worked at the Sand Spur. He remembered her from Millie’s funeral, and knew that her name was Jenny.

  “Yes, Jenny, can I help you?”

  “I know that Millie came to you once when she needed help, so I thought, I mean, with the marshal being dead and all, well, you might be the best one for me to tell.”

  “Tell what?”

  “All of the posse men are down at the saloon right now,” Jenny said. “Mr. Gilmore, they plan to ambush all the riders from Coventry Ranch when they come in. They plan to kill them all, then take the herd.”

  “Oh, surely, they won’t do anything like that,” Gilmore said, trying to assuage young woman’s fears.

  “You don’t know these men,” Jenny said. “Last night I saw them kill Marshal Sparks in cold blood. And this morning they killed Mr. Kincaid.”

  “Kincaid? They killed Marcus Kincaid?”

  “Yes, sir, they were in there talking and laughing about it. Mr. Gilmore, Prew works for Conventry on the Snake. He—he has always been very nice to me. I wouldn’t like to see anything happen to him. Or to Mrs. Wellington either, her being so nice to Millie and all.”

  Crack and Jake rounded up the dead posse men. There were six of them, including Scraggs, who had been shot in the back. Now, all the bodies were laid out alongside the barn.

  “I hate taking them into town,” Tyrone said. “What with the four that Matt killed the other night, that would be ten bodies we’ve given the good people of Medbury to have to bury and pay for.”

  “I sure can’t see buryin’ them out here though,” Prew said. “No sense in spoilin’ good range land by plantin’ scoundrels like these polecats in the soil.”

  “Somebody’s comin’,” Crack said.

  Looking through the arched gate and out onto the road, they saw an approaching team and light wagon.

  “That’s somebody in a surrey. More’n likely it’s Kincaid,” Jake said.

  “No,” Matt said. “It’s George Gilmore.”

  “Who?” Crack asked.

  “Gilmore,” Prew said. “You know, that little lawyer fella.”

  “Wonder what he wants?” Tyrone asked.

  Matt and the others watched as Gilmore drove through the gate, then around the curved driveway, the wheels making a crunching sound as they rolled through the pea gravel. From inside the house, Kitty had seen him as well, and now she came out to greet him. Matt walked over to join her.

  “Mr. Gilmore,” Kitty said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  “Mrs. Wellington, Mr. Jensen,” Gilmore said. He took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face. “I wish I had better news to report.”

  “What is it?” Kitty asked.

  “Mr. Kincaid is dead,” Gilmore said.

  “Marcus, dead?” Kitty replied. “How?”

  “Clay Sherman killed him. Sherman also killed the marshal.”

  “Oh, my!” Kitty said.

  “Right now, Sherman and his men have taken over the town,” Gilmore said. “Jenny heard some of them talking. I believe it is their plan to ambush you when you come to town, then confiscate the herd.”

  “Confiscate? Is that a fancy name for stealing?” Matt asked.

  “To be truthful, it is nothing but stealing. Sherman is using something called the herd management law as his authority, but it would never stand up to scrutiny.”

  Kitty shook her head. “I’ve never heard of the herd management law.”

  “It is a law that nominally prohibits someone from raising anything but cattle in a district that is set aside for cattle.”

  “If I was violating the law, why didn’t someone tell me?”

  “It was not to Marcus Kincaid’s advantage for you to be in concurrence with the law. That’s why he hired Sherman to enforce the law, and thus prevent you from fulfilling your contract with the army.”

  “But you said Sherman killed Marcus,” Kitty replied.

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Why?”

  Gilmore shook his head. “I’m not sure. Evidently they had a falling out of some sort.”

  “Mr. Gilmore, do you have any idea what Sherman has in mind now?” Matt asked.

  “Yes, I do. He plans to set up an ambush for you. I believe he intends to kill every one of you when you come to town, then taking the herd to Chicago himself.”

  “That’s it,” Kitty said. “We aren’t going to town.”

  “Kitty, do you think if we don’t go to town, they will just go away?” Matt asked.

  “Oh, I-I don’t know what I think,” Kitty said.

  “You hired me to see to it that your horses get to Chicago. Why don’t you just let me do my job.”

  “I told you, Matt, these men are my family,” Kitty said. “I lost Hank and Timmy. I don’t want any of the others to be killed.”

  “I’ll handle it,” Matt said. “There is no need for any of the men to go into town.”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t want you killed either. And you can’t go into town to face them, all alone.”

  Matt looked at the bodies of the posse men who had been killed the night before.

  “I won’t be alone,” he said, mysteriously.

  Word spread quickly around town that Sherman had now lost a total of eleven men to failed attempts to take the horses Kitty Wellington was planning on shipping to Chicago. Word also spread that Sherman and the five men he had remaining were planning on ambushing Matt Jensen and Kitty Wellington’s riders when they brought the herd into town today.

  Because of that, all businesses were closed and all the residents of town were off the streets. If there was going to be a battle in Medbury, and it looked as if such a battle was going to take place, there would be bullets flying everywhere, and if that was the case, the street was no place to be.

  Clay Sherman established his command post, as he called it, at the railroad depot. Burnett was over at the Dunnigan’s store, behind the porch, Walker was on the roof of the apothecary, concealed by the false front. Burke and Carson were in the loft of the livery stable. Grimes was in Anna Cooke’s dress shop which, because it was at the south end of the street, would make the first contact with Jensen and the others when they came into town.

  Hearing a whistle, Sherman looked west on the track and saw a train approaching. He watched as the engine came into the station, then left the main track and switched over to a side track. The engine was pulling a long string of empty stock cars, with a parlor car attached at the end. The train came to a squeaking halt, then the engineer released the steam as the huge, powerful locomotive sat on the spur track.

  Sherman watched the dispatcher walk out to the train and call something up to the engineer. The engineer and fireman came down from the cab, and the three of them hurried across the tracks before disappearing in the depot.

  Sherman climbed up onto the water tower, then looked south. That was when he saw the approaching herd of horses, being driven expertly toward town.

  “Ha!” Sherman said, speaking aloud. “This is working out well. You are bringing the herd right to us.”

  Sherman cupped his hands around his mouth. “Walker!” he called to the man on the apothecary just across the street. When Walker looked toward him, Sherman pointed toward the herd. “They are coming! Get ready! Tell the others!”

  He heard Walker shout to Burke and Carson, then he heard the alarm passed on to the others.
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  Looking back toward the herd, he saw that it had been stopped. At first, he wondered what was going on, then he saw a wagon coming up the road from the herd. There were two men on the driver’s seat of the wagon, both were carrying rifles. And as the wagon got closer, he saw four men in the back, also carrying rifles. Damn, he thought. They were making this too easy.

  “Walker!” he shouted. “They are coming in, in a wagon. Tell the others! Start shooting as soon as they get in range!”

  Kneeling down on the ledge that ran around the water tower, Sherman cocked his rifle and waited. For a moment, the wagon was out of site on the other side of the blacksmith shop, but as soon as it appeared again, Sherman fired.

  Sherman’s opening shot alerted the others and they began shooting too. For several seconds the street reverberated with the sound of rifle fire.

  Matt had come into town riding in a second bottom underneath the wagon. Looking through a narrow opening, he watched for the best opportunity to leave the wagon, slipping out just as it passed behind the blacksmith shop, during which time it was momentarily out of sight from anyone in town.

  Running around behind the blacksmith shop, he began moving up the alley, keeping pace with the wagon as the team pulled it, and its grisly load of dead passengers, dressed, not in the uniform of the posse, but in old shirts belonging to the Coventry riders.

  When the shooting started, Matt determined where each of the shooters was. Seeing that one of the shooters was in the dress shop, he decided to take care of that one first, believing the seamstress might be in the most danger.

  Matt ran up to the back of the dress shop, and saw a woman outside, standing behind a tree as he did so.

  “Anna!” he called.

  Startled, the woman looked toward him. “Who are you?” she asked in a frightened voice.

  “I’m Matt Jensen, I’m—”

  “Kitty’s friend,” Anna said.

  “Yes. Who is inside?” he asked, pointing toward the shop.

  “There is a man in the front of the store,” Anna said. “He has a gun.”

  “Go into your house,” Matt said, pointing to the house that was behind the dress shop. “Stay away from the windows.”

  Anna nodded, then complied with his directions as Matt slipped in through the back door of the dress shop.

  There were a couple of dress forms in the back room of the shop, and one of them was on wheels. Matt picked it up and moved quietly toward the front. He stopped at the door that separated the two rooms and saw the shooter standing at the open front door of the shop, shooting his rifle and cocking it, and shooting again.

  Matt gave the dress form a push, and it rolled across the floor of the front room. Startled, the man jerked around, and fired at the rolling dress form. Matt shot back, and the man tumbled out onto the front porch.

  Running up to the front of the building, Matt looked out across the street and saw someone rise up from behind the porch of the mercantile to shoot at the wagon. Matt took him down with one shot.

  Sherman could actually see the bullets hitting the men who were in the wagon; he even saw dust coming up from the impact, and yet not one of the men reacted in any way to the bullets.

  “What the hell?” Sherman said aloud.

  “It’s Scraggs!” Walker shouted from the top of the apothecary. “Stop shooting! It’s our own men! They are all dead!”

  Matt dashed out of the dress shop then, and seeing him, both Sherman and Walker started shooting. Bullets whizzed by his head and popped dirt up from the street as Matt ran in a zigzagging fashion until he reached the open door of the livery.

  “Burke! Carson! He’s in the livery!” Sherman shouted from the water tower.

  Once inside, Matt heard a sound from the hayloft above. He also saw little bits and pieces of hay falling down between the cracks.

  “Where is he? Where did he go?” a voice asked.

  “I don’t know. Sherman said he came in here,” another voice answered.

  There were two lofts in the barn, one, on the north end of the barn, was for hay. The other, at the south end of the barn was for equipment. The two lofts were separated by an open space of about forty feet. Matt climbed up onto the equipment loft, then he moved quietly to the edge and, taking concealment behind some wooden barrels, looked across. There were posse members standing on the other side, trying to look down into the barn to find the intruder.

  Matt saw a rope tied off onto one of the supporting pillars. The rope looped through a pulley just under the peak of the roof, then the other end of the rope was tied off on one of the support pillars on the opposite loft. Matt untied the rope, and with a running start, leaped from the equipment loft and swung over to the hay loft.

  “Carson! There!” Burke shouted and he and Carson fired at Matt as he swung across the opening.

  Matt hit the floor on the hayloft, rolled once, then fired back. Carson fell forward, Burked tumbled backward, through the loft window, and onto the ground in front of the livery.

  Matt was climbing down from the hayloft when a bullet hit the ladder rung just above his head. Looping his arms and legs over the outside of the ladder, Matt slid down quickly, even as another bullet whizzed by him. Once he was on the ground, he turned toward his assailant and fired.

  Making certain that he was dead, Matt took a moment to reload. He had just finished reloading when he heard Sherman calling to him from the street.

  “Jensen! Jensen! Come on out and face me like a man! Jensen! Where are you?”

  Matt left by the back door of the livery, ran down the alley for about half a block, then darted between two buildings and came out onto the street. He was behind Sherman, who was standing in front of the livery.

  “Burke! Carson! Walker! Where are you?”

  Matt put his pistol in his holster, and walked up to within sixty feet of Sherman.

  “Jensen!”

  Matt said nothing.

  Sherman turned then, and was startled to see Matt standing so close to him on the street. For a second he was frightened, then he saw that Matt’s gun was in his holster. Sherman actually had his pistol was in his hand, but his arm was down by his side.

  “Well now,” Sherman said, with an evil grin spreading across his face. “Here we are, just you and me.

  Only I have my gun in my hand, and you have yours in your holster.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Matt said.

  “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”

  “I’m going to kill you anyway.”

  With a loud, angry yell, Sherman brought his pistol up.

  Epilogue

  The wind whispered as it came off the sails, and the sun created a million dancing diamonds on the surface of Lake Michigan. Matt and Kitty were seated on the afterdeck of the yacht, eating the meal the chef of the yacht had prepared for them. The yacht was about a mile offshore and from here, they had a great view of the city of Chicago. A passenger train was racing south along the lake shore.

  “Where do you think that train is going?” Kitty asked.

  “I don’t know,” Matt answered. “New Orleans, maybe?”

  “Oh, wouldn’t you like to go to New Orleans?”

  “Some day, perhaps,” Matt said. “But not today. I’m enjoying where I am right now.”

  “So am I,” Kitty said. “I have had such a wonderful time in Chicago that I don’t even want to go back. I hate to say this, but I could almost be convinced to sell the ranch.”

  “And do what?” Matt asked.

  “The same thing you do,” Kitty said. “Just wander around.”

  Matt shook his head. “No, Kitty, you don’t want to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Didn’t you say Tyrone, Prew, Crack, Jake, and the others were your family?”

  Kitty was silent for a long moment. “Yes,” she finally replied. “Yes, I did say that, didn’t I?”

  “Besides, you don’t want to quit now. The army not only bought all your horses, t
hey told you they would buy as many as you could provide them.”

  “Did you hear them say that it was the finest bunch of horses they had bought all year?” Kitty asked, proudly.

  “Yes, I did hear that,” Matt said. “And now, without the pressure of paying off a loan, the money you got from selling your horses to the army, and the guarantee you got for future contracts, you could just enjoy your ranch and your horses.”

  “Do you think you could?” Kitty asked.

  “Do I think I could what?”

  “Enjoy my ranch, my horses, and me?” Kitty said.

  “Kitty, I—”

  “No,” Kitty said, holding up her hand and interrupting Matt in midsentence. She smiled at him. “Don’t answer that, Matt. Let me keep my dream.”

  “Let you keep your dream? Oh, I don’t know. I’m not so sure about that,” Matt said, smiling.

  “What do you mean, you aren’t so sure?”

  “Kitty, you have just proven to me that your dreams seem to have a way of coming true.”

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

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  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2010 William W. Johnstone

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.

  PINNACLE BOOKS and the Pinnacle logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off. The WWJ steer head logo is a trademark of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-2439-1

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