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AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS
THE RANGE DETECTIVES
HANG THEM SLOWLY
WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE
with J. A. Johnstone
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Teaser chapter
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2016 J. A. 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.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
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.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
PINNACLE BOOKS, the Pinnacle logo, and the WWJ steer head logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-7860-4489-4
Electronic edition:
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3816-9 (e-book)
ISBN-10: 0-7860-3816-0 (e-book)
CHAPTER ONE
Trouble hung in the air like smoke drifting in from a distant fire. At least, it seemed that way to the young man dressed in well-worn range clothes who rode slowly along the main street of Wagontongue, Montana.
It was a busy day in the settlement. A number of wagons were parked on the street, especially around the two mercantile stores. Many of the hitch racks were almost full, too. The young man reined in, swung down from the saddle, and looped his horse’s reins around the last available spot at the rail in front of the Silver Star Saloon.
Strains of music from what sounded like a player piano drifted past the batwings into the warm afternoon air of the street. The tune was a sprightly, enticing one, but the newcomer didn’t need much encouragement to step into the saloon. He’d had a long ride, and his throat was dry from thirst.
The tension he had sensed as he rode into town was even thicker inside the Silver Star. He felt it as soon as he pushed through the batwings. The music continued—it did indeed come from a player piano tucked into a corner—but the low buzz of conversation in the room tailed off and then stopped as the customers turned to look at him.
He saw right away that three distinct groups occupied the saloon. Ten men sat around a large, round table in the back, covered with baize for poker playing although a game wasn’t going on at the moment. They were drinking instead. A couple partially full bottles of whiskey sat on the table, along with an empty one.
A like number of men stood together at the bar, shot glasses and mugs of beer on the hardwood in front of them. They seemed more interested in using the long mirror on the wall behind the bar to keep an eye on the men at the table than they did in drinking.
The feelings of hostility between those two bunches were so thick they were almost visible in the smoke-hazed air.
The other group in the saloon consisted of the bartender, a couple young women in short spangled dresses who worked there, and several men who sat at some of the tables scattered to the newcomer’s left. They looked like townsmen, except for a lean, saturnine man in a frock coat who sat alone, lazily dealing a hand of solitaire on the table in front of him. The newcomer figured he was a tinhorn gambler, but the atmosphere in the saloon was too tense for anybody else to be interested in a card game.
The townies—too stubborn to be run out . . . yet—looked nervous but unwilling to finish their drinks and leave. If a ruckus erupted, more than likely they would dart through those batwings almost quicker than the eye could follow.
All that information flashed through the young man’s brain in a heartbeat. He’d barely paused as the batwings swung closed behind him, then strode to the bar and stopped at the closest end, several feet away from the group of men who stood there.
The people in the saloon started talking again, figuring him for a nobody. Just a drifter. Another saddle tramp.
That was what he looked like in his run-down boots, faded denim trousers, patched shirt, and sweat-stained hat. He wore a gun, but it was an old Colt single-action in a plain holster, worn high enough to make it obvious that he wasn’t any kind of fast draw. The brown stubble on his jaw and the layer of trail dust on his face and clothes made it obvious he had been traveling for quite a while.
The bartender, a gray-haired man with creases and gullies in his face that looked like a river had carved them out, came over to the newcomer and asked, “Somethin’ for you, mister?”
“Beer,” the young man said. “How much?”
“Two bits.”
The young man reached into a pocket, brought out a coin, looked at it, and heaved a wistful sigh like he was saying good-bye to an old friend. He slid it across the hardwood. The bartender fil
led a mug and set it in front of the newcomer while his other hand deftly scooped up the coin.
The young man took a sip of the beer to cut the trail dust in his throat. Then, since the bartender was still standing across from him, he leaned forward, lowered his voice, and asked, “Is it just me, or is everybody in here wound up a mite tight?”
The bartender turned so his back was partially toward the rest of the saloon, leaned an elbow on the hardwood, and said in a confidential tone, “It’s sort of like waitin’ for a thunderstorm to burst on a hot, still day, ain’t it?”
“I’d say so.”
The bartender leaned his head toward the big table in the back.
“That’s the Rafter M crew yonder. Some of ’em, anyway. The ones most on the prod. The ones here at the bar are the Three Rivers bunch.” The bartender shook his head. “Ain’t no love lost between ’em, I can tell you that for a fact.”
“Is there going to be a fight?”
“I hope not. Mort Cabot, the fella who owns the Rafter M, and Keenan Malone, the boss of the Three Rivers, are good about payin’ for damages, but I’d just as soon not have to go through all the bother of cleanin’ up. Name’s Cy Hartung, by the way. This is my place.”
“Vance Brewster. I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Hartung.”
“Grub line rider?”
“Yep. Anybody around here hiring?”
“I’m not sure about that,” Hartung said. “I think the Three Rivers just hired a couple new hands, but they may be full up now.”
“You said the boss is named Malone? Is he here?”
Hartung shook his head. “Naw. He ain’t much of a drinker. These fellas are just some of the punchers who work for him.”
“Pretty good spread that Malone has?”
“One of the biggest and best in these parts. He don’t own it, though, just runs it. Somebody back east actually owns it. Don’t know if it’s one man or one of those . . . what do you call ’em? Syndicates. Some ranches here in Montana are even owned by Englishmen.”
Both men shook their heads as if to ask what the world was coming to.
“I reckon the Rafter M must be pretty big, too,” Vance said. “It’s natural that big spreads would have a rivalry. I’ve seen it plenty of times before. Last place I rode for, down in Colorado, the fellas couldn’t stand the men who worked for the next ranch over, and the feeling was vice versa.”
“It ain’t just a rivalry.” Hartung lowered his voice. “There’s been trouble—stolen cattle trouble—with both sides blamin’ the other.”
Vance took another sip of his beer and frowned.
“You make it sound like the best thing a fella could do is to mount up and ride outta this part of the country. If all hell’s gonna break loose, it can do it without me.” He sighed. “Problem is, I’m near flat busted. I got to have some work and earn some wages.”
“Might be you could get something clerkin’ at one of the stores.”
The look Vance gave the bartender made it clear he would never stoop that low. Any job that couldn’t be done from horseback just wasn’t worth doing, in the opinion of most cowboys.
Vance had a feeling somebody was watching him. He glanced along the bar and saw that one of the Three Rivers punchers was slouched forward over the hardwood, idly toying with his beer mug while he looked toward Vance. The man was tall and lanky, with a hawk-like face and a thick black mustache that drooped over his wide mouth. He wore a collarless shirt and a black leather vest, and a battered black hat was thumbed back on a rumpled thatch of dark hair. He gave Vance a friendly nod and a half-smile, then turned his head to say something to the stocky, redheaded man who stood on the other side of him.
Vance forgot about those two a moment later when one of the Rafter M men stood up from the table and sauntered toward the entrance.
The man moved like a big cat and had the same air of menace about him, an attitude that said he could strike swiftly and dangerously at any second, with no warning. His lean, handsome face had a slightly lantern-jawed cast to it. His black hat was cocked at a jaunty angle on his sandy hair.
“Who’s that?” Vance asked Cy Hartung.
“Dax Coolidge.” A frown of disapproval creased the saloon man’s already wrinkled face. “He’s a gunman.”
“I thought you said those fellas all rode for the Rafter M.”
“That’s where Coolidge draws his wages, all right, but Mort Cabot didn’t hire him for his ropin’ skills, if you know what I mean. With trouble brewin’ between Cabot’s spread and the Three Rivers, I reckon it makes sense he’d want some gun-handy fellas workin’ for him.”
“So he brought in Coolidge?”
Hartung scratched his jaw. “Well, come to think of it, Coolidge had been in these parts for a while when he signed on with the Rafter M. Had sort of a shady reputation, too, but I reckon that didn’t matter to Cabot. You could even say that helped make up Cabot’s mind.”
“The more I hear, the better that clerking job is starting to sound.” Vance took another drink, licked his lips, and added, “I don’t want any part of a range war.”
“I don’t blame you there.” Hartung glanced toward the door, then caught his breath. His hands, which were lying flat on the bar, pressed down harder in reaction to what he saw.
Vance couldn’t help but turn his head to look. Dax Coolidge had stopped short a couple steps from the entrance when the batwings swung inward to admit someone else.
A young woman stepped inside. Hair the color of a sunset brushed her shoulders and hung partway down her back. She wore a man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled up a couple turns, a brown vest, and a brown skirt split for riding astride. Her hat dangled behind her head from the chin strap around her throat.
Vance figured he knew a ranch girl when he saw one, and a pretty one, at that, even with the scowl displayed on her face as she looked at the man who blocked her path.
“I’ll thank you to get out of my way, Mr. Coolidge,” she said.
He gave her a mocking grin in return. “Here I thought you were the one in my way, Rose.”
She blew out an exasperated breath and started to step to the side.
Coolidge moved to block her again.
“Blast it,” Cy Hartung muttered. “I was startin’ to hope there wouldn’t be any trouble.”
“Who’s that?” Vance asked again.
“The girl? Miss Rosaleen Malone. Her pa is old Keenan Malone, the boss of the Three Rivers I was tellin’ you about.”
“Coolidge acts like he knows her.”
“Shoot, everybody in these parts knows Rosaleen. She was born and raised here. Malone had her on a horse before she could walk. She was born sort of late in life to Malone and his wife, and she’s the only youngster they ever had. Folks figure Malone wanted a son, so he tried to make Rosaleen as much like one as he could.”
Vance shook his head and said in an admiring tone, “Nobody’s ever going to mistake her for a boy.”
“No, not likely.”
While Vance was talking to the bartender, Rosaleen Malone had tried to move the other way and go around Coolidge, but once again he had placed himself in her path.
She was starting to look more than frustrated. She was getting mad. “You need to get out of my way.”
“I could do that,” Coolidge said. “But you’re gonna have to do something for me first.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s nothing bad. Just have a dance with me, Rose.” Coolidge nodded toward the player piano, which was still cranking out a merry tune.
“No,” she said flatly.
From the table where the rest of the Rafter M men were sitting, one of them called, “Leave the gal alone, Dax.”
Without looking around, Coolidge said, “You stay out of it, Harry. This is none of your business.” His voice held a distinct tone of menace, even though it was directed at a fellow member of the Rafter M crew.
Clearly, Dax Coolidge was a man who didn’t like to be cros
sed—by anybody.
The men at the table looked uneasy, and Vance knew why. On the frontier, a decent woman was treated with the utmost respect, even by the most hardened range riders. Too few of them were around to do otherwise.
Evidently Coolidge didn’t believe that code of conduct applied to him. With the Three Rivers men standing along the bar watching, he reached out and closed his left hand around Rosaleen’s right arm.
“Oh, no,” Cy Hartung said. “He’s laid hands on her.”
“Dance with me, Rose,” Coolidge said as he pulled her closer to him.
Since he had hold of her right arm, her left hand flashed up and cracked across his face. His head jerked to the side, he uttered a curse, and reached for her with his other hand.
What he intended to do next, nobody ever knew. The men from the Three Rivers exploded away from the bar, furious shouts erupting from their throats.
CHAPTER TWO
As the Three Rivers punchers swarmed toward Coolidge, one man bounded ahead of his companions, grabbed Coolidge’s shoulder, hauled him around, and yelled, “Get your hands off her, you no-good son of a—”
Coolidge’s fist crashed into his face and knocked him back into the arms of his friends.
At the same moment, the Rafter M crew leaped to their feet and waded in, tackling and slugging.
Vance had seen the disapproval on their faces as Coolidge accosted Rosaleen Malone, but regardless of that, men such as these rode for the brand, and when one of their own was under attack, they sprung to his aid.
As Vance expected, every customer in the place who didn’t belong to one of the two ranch crews scurried to get out of the saloon. A bottleneck backup formed at the entrance as shoulders wedged together, but then the two men who were stuck popped through and the rest stampeded after them, including the frock-coated gambler.
Squealing, the two saloon girls darted behind the bar and ducked down in case any chairs started flying, which was always possible in a brawl. Cy Hartung ran back and forth, shouting futilely at the battlers to take it outside.
Hang Them Slowly Page 1
