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Authors: William W. Johnstone

BOOK: Kill or Die
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CHAPTER SIXTY
“Well, that's a sight to see,” Dr. Oliver D. Toler said. “Mr. O'Hara, you're lucky you still have your arm.”
“Will you look at my ankle, Doc?” Flintlock said.
“I can stitch it up, but there is some tissue loss and you may never have your full strength in this arm again,” Dr. Toler said. “And I'm afraid there will be scarring. It's a large wound.”
“It was a large alligator,” O'Hara said.
“What about my ankle, Doc?” Flintlock said.
“Nurse Meadows, clean up Mr. O'Hara's arm, please. I want to get started on it right away.”
“Anybody going to look at my ankle, Doc?” Flintlock said.
“Mr. Flintlock, it's a bad sprain,” the doctor said. “I'll bind it up for you later. Now tell me, in the name of God, how can someone escape the jaws of an alligator and suffer only a sprain?”
“I'd already shot it, Doc,” Flintlock said. “Maybe it wasn't feeling too good.”
“I don't agree with killing animals,” Nurse Millie Meadows said. She was a tall thin woman, with a little steel purse of a mouth that snapped open and shut and slightly protruding blue eyes. She carried a brown bottle and a swab.
“You would have agreed with killing Basilisk,” Flintlock said. “He'd been a man-eater for two hundred years and maybe longer.”
“We're all God's creatures, Mr. Flintlock.” Then to O'Hara, “This stuff stings like crazy, so you must be a brave little soldier.”
Flintlock watched the nurse start to clean up O'Hara's arm. “Does it sting?” he said.
“Like crazy,” O'Hara said, his mouth tight.
“You're next, Mr. Flintlock,” Nurse Meadows said. “Let's hope you're as brave a little soldier as your friend.”
 
 
“Tough to be brave when the nurse from Hell is bandaging up a broken ankle,” Flintlock said.
“It's only sprained,” O'Hara said.
“It felt like it was broke.”
“Yeah, well my arm felt as though he was sawing it off at the elbow,” O'Hara said. “Ah, here's the restaurant, Ma's Kitchen. And Doc Toler was right. They are looking for a dishwasher.”
Flintlock glanced at the sign in the window and said, “I say we ride on out of here. Look at this town, there's hardly enough people left to dirty dishes.”
“Sam, you heard what the doc said—we need to stay in town for a few weeks to make sure my arm doesn't get infected,” O'Hara said. “Besides, we're broke. How are we going to reach the Arizona Territory without a grubstake?”
Flintlock had a borrowed crutch under his arm, a fat bandage on his foot, and O'Hara's arm was in a sling.
“And you need boots,” O'Hara said.
“I can't stand on a bad ankle and wash dishes,” Flintlock said.
“I reckon they'll give you a chair, Sammy. And Doc says Ma is paying fifty cents a day. That's good money around these parts.”
“O'Hara, maybe I could gun an outlaw along the trail and claim the reward,” Flintlock said. “It's time I went back to practicing my old profession anyhow. I'd say it's a plan that beats dishwashing.”
“Too thin, Sam. We need fifty cents a day to survive while my wounds heal. You heard what Dr. Toler said about gangrene. I could lose my arm.”
Flintlock's shoulders slumped. “All right,” he said, “I got no other choice but to put my head in the noose.”
 
 
A couple of men were eating a late lunch when Flintlock stepped into the restaurant. “Take a seat,” a large woman said. “God knows there's enough of them.” Then, after looking Flintlock up and down from the tattoo on his throat to his bandaged ankle, she said, “What the hell are you?”
“I'm a dishwasher,” Flintlock said.
“No, he ain't, Ma.” One of the diners stood. “He's the ranny that robbed the bank.”
“I gave the money back,” Flintlock said.
“It was Mathias Cobb who was the real robber, Elmer,” Ma said. “He's the one who destroyed this town.”
“You can't trust that outlaw, Ma,” the man called Elmer said. “He'll rob you blind.”
“Hell, I got nothing much left to rob,” Ma said. “And I need a dishwasher. Kitchen's that way, mister, and the wage is fifty cents a day and grub. You can bed down in the kitchen if you got nowhere else to live and by the look of you, you don't.”
Flintlock touched his hat. “I'm much obliged, ma'am. Name's—”
“I don't care what your name is. You can call me Ma. I'll get you a chair so you can sit at the sink. Well? Get started.”
When Flintlock stepped into the kitchen he was appalled. His predecessor must have quit a while back because there were teetering pillars of dirty plates, mountains of pots and pans and tangled masses of silverware.
Flintlock found an apron and started in to earn his fifty cents.
 
 
Six weeks later Ma closed her kitchen for lack of customers. She said she was moving to Philadelphia to live with her widowed sister. By then O'Hara's arm was healing nicely and Sam Flintlock's ankle was back to normal. Ma, impressed by Flintlock's efforts, told him he was a credit to the dishwashing profession and she filled a couple of sacks with leftover grub for the trail. “I hope you find your ma, Sam,” she said as she closed the restaurant door for the last time.
Three days later Dr. Toler took down his shingle and moved on with Nurse Meadows, who was now his bride, and the saloon closed the very same day. Flintlock and O'Hara had kept their horses at the abandoned livery and the animals had gone through all the hay and oats that had been left behind and were in fine shape for the trail.
Matthew Garry, the general store owner, sold his entire stock “at below cost,” and Flintlock and O'Hara were able to outfit themselves for the coming winter cheaply.
As they rode out of Budville under a clear fall sky, O'Hara said, “I'm looking forward to a peaceful trail, Sammy, shooting my own grub along the way and sleeping on dry land under the stars.”
“That makes two of us,” Flintlock said. “You know, I've been thinking. I believe I could prosper in the restaurant business.”
“Why not? Ma gave you some good dishwashing experience and that's all it takes, experience.”
“Well, I'll find my ma and then decide,” Flintlock said. “Just plain home cooking, mind, steaks and eggs and pork chops. Nothing fancy.”
“Why, the more I think on it, the more I feel it's a crackerjack idea, Sammy,” O'Hara said. “I'd like to throw in with you.”
“Sure,” Flintlock said. He extended his hand. “It's a deal.”
“What are we going to call our place?”
“The Evangeline,” Flintlock said.
And O'Hara said, “Crackerjack!”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE:
Afterward
Sam Flintlock and his half-breed sidekick O'Hara found the town of Bearsden by accident. It was an ill-starred discovery that they very soon would have cause to regret.
They were twenty miles south of the New Mexico Territory and a few miles east of the southernmost ridges of the Guadalupe Mountains in the rugged Delaware Basin country when Flintlock said he smelled a pig on a spit.
“Wind's blowing from the north, so it's got to be just ahead of us,” he said. “Man, I could eat some of that.”
“I smell it too, but I never heard tell of any settlement around this part of the country,” O'Hara said.
“Well, maybe it's a ranch cookout or even a hunting party,” Flintlock said. “I sure aim to find out.”
The vast bulk of the Guadalupe looked like a great monolithic wall through the desert erected by a giant race of men in times past. But that was deceptive. Within the wall lay dramatic canyons, hanging valleys and shady glades surrounded by desert scrub and a profusion of wildlife.
Flintlock said, “Why not build a town around here? It's as good a place as any.”
O'Hara nodded. “There's something not setting right with me, Sam. I have the feeling we're riding into—”
“Danger?”
“I don't know. Something . . . bad.”
“That's the Injun in you talking, O'Hara. Injuns reckon there's evil spirits and such just around every bend of the trail.”
O'Hara shook his head, his long black hair moving across his shoulders. “I can't shake it, Sam. I say we ride on.”
“Look!” Flintlock said, pointing. “See how wrong you are? It's a town all right and I bet they're roasting a pig.”
Ahead of them lay a one-street town like thousands of others in the West, dusty, dry and barely clinging to life. But for two hungry and thirsty men it was an oasis in the desert, as bright and beckoning as any big city back east.
“Grin, O'Hara. Look, stretch your mouth wide like me.”
“Why?” O'Hara was always inclined to surliness when something troubled him.
“Because we're flat broke and we're depending on the generosity of others. Now grin, like we're visiting kinfolk.”
O'Hara tried, but his grin came off as a grimace. It didn't really matter because when they rode into the street Flintlock's own grin vanished like frost in sunlight. A gallows, hung with red, white and blue bunting, had been erected at the entrance to the town and a booted man hung from a hemp noose. His neck was twisted to one side, his tongue lolled out of his mouth and his eyes, bulging out of his head, were wide open. But he'd ceased to see anything hours before when his neck broke.
A sign on the gallows said, WELCOME TO BEARSDEN.
But there was no one around to form a welcoming committee. The street was deserted.
Tables laden with food, fried chicken, great haunches of beef, cakes, pies and even a melting tub of ice cream lined the boardwalk. The pig Flintlock had smelled was spiked on a spit but since there was no one to turn the handle the huge hog had begun to char and dripped fat into the flames of the fire. All the stores were bright with bunting, their doors wide open, and inside the empty saloon a player piano tinkled the tune, “'Tis the Last Rose of Summer.”
Flintlock drew rein and said to O'Hara, “Where the hell is everybody? Hell, I don't even see a horse around or a even a dog.”
“Sammy, I don't like this,” O'Hara said. “Let's get out of here.”
“With all this grub around and a wide-open saloon? Are you nuts?”
The crash of a rifle shot shattered the quiet, followed by a scream. “It came from the livery stable,” Flintlock said. He kicked his horse into motion, O'Hara, his Winchester in his hands, close behind him.
Flintlock reined in his horse, pulled his Colt from his waistband and warily stepped from bright sun into the gloom of the stable. Gun smoke hung in the air . . . but the place was deserted.
O'Hara stepped beside Flintlock and said, “Sam, this is a bad luck town and there's evil around. We got to get out of here now.”
“I think we're already way too late,” Sam Flintlock said.
TURN THE PAGE FOR AN EXCITING PREVIEW
They survived the perilous thousand-mile journey to the
far edges of the Texas frontier. Now the family that tamed
the Wild West must fight to defend their home from a
ruthless band hell-bent on stealing it away.
 
A KERRIGAN NEVER BACKS DOWN
 
Kate Kerrigan has seen the blood-soaked face of
war. But nothing has prepared her for the assault
on her land that begins with an eviction order
hammered onto the door of her family's cabin.
Beautiful, cold-blooded Savannah Saint James
has her sights set on the Kerrigan property—
and twelve of the deadliest hired guns in Texas
are ready to back her play. Kate has her sons by
her side, a ragtag group of ranchers who don't like
outsiders messing with their cattle, and a fighting
spirit passed down from her Irish ancestors.
One thing's for sure: the Kerrigans aren't giving up
what's theirs without a scrap. When the battle
is joined, only one side will prevail—
and the end will be written in gun smoke.
 
USA Today
and
New York Times
Bestselling Authors
W
ILLIAM
W. J
OHNSTONE
with J. A. Johnstone
 
The Kerrigans, a Texas Dynasty
THE LAWLESS
 
 
On sale now, wherever Pinnacle Books are sold
CHAPTER ONE
“You had to do it, Miz Kerrigan,” Sheriff Miles Martin said, hat in hand. “He came looking for trouble.”
Kate Kerrigan stood at her parlor window, stared into moon-dappled darkness, and said nothing.
“I mean, he planned to rob you, and after you fed him, an' all,” Martin said.
Kate turned, a tall, elegant woman. Her once flaming red hair was now gray but her fine-boned, Celtic beauty was still enough to turn a man's head.
She smiled at Martin.
“He planned to murder me, Miles. Cover his tracks, I guess.”
“Where is Trace?” Martin said.
“Out on the range, and so is his brother,” Kate said.
“And Miss Ivy and Miss Shannon?”
“My segundo's wife is birthing a child. Doc Woodruff is off fly-fishing somewhere, so Ivy and Shannon went over to Lucy Cobb's cabin to help. Lucy has already had three, so I don't foresee any problems.”
Then as though she feared she was tempting fate, Kate said in the lilting Irish brogue she'd never lost, “May Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and all the saints in heaven protect her this night.”
“He was a city slicker,” Martin said.
The sheriff, a drink of water with a walrus mustache and sad brown eyes, stood in front of the fire. He had a Colt self-cocker in his holster and a silver star pinned to the front of his sheepskin.
The fall of 1907 had been cold and the winter was shaping up to be a sight worse.
“He had the look of one,” Kate said.
Martin looked uncomfortable and awkward, all big hands and spurred boots. He chose his words carefully, like a barefoot man walking through a nettle patch.
“How did it happen, Miz Kerrigan? I need to ask.”
“Of course, Miles,” Kate said. “Why don't you sit and I'll get you a brandy. Only to keep out the chill, you understand.”
The big lawman sat gratefully in the studded leather chair by the fire.
“I'm right partial to brandy,” he said. “Warms a man's insides, I always say.”
Kate poured brandy in two huge snifters, handed one to Martin, and settled herself in the chair opposite.
The lawman thought she sat like a queen, and why not? Kate's range was larger than some European kingdoms.
Martin played for time.
He produced the makings and said, “May I beg your indulgence, ma'am?”
“Please do. My son Quinn is much addicted to cigarettes, a habit he learned from our vaqueros, who smoke like chimneys.”
“Doctors say it's good for the chest,” Martin said.
“So I've heard, but I do not set store by what doctors say.”
Kate sipped her brandy, and then stooped to poke the logs into life. She didn't look up.
“I've killed men before, Miles.”
“I know, Miz Kerrigan, but I was trying to spare you a lot of fool questions.”
The woman's emerald green eyes fixed on Martin's face.
“I'll tell you what happened here earlier this evening and you can ask your questions as you see fit.”
The lawman nodded.
“I'd given the servants the night off, and I was alone in the house when I heard a horse come to a halt outside.”
“What time was that, Miz Kerrigan?”
“It was seven o'clock. I was here, sitting by the fire eating the cold supper the cook had prepared for me, and heard the grandfather clock chime in the hallway. A few moments later a knock came to the door.”
Kate's blue silk day dress rustled as she sat back and made herself more comfortable.
“I answered the summons and opened to a man, an ordinary looking fellow wearing an old dark jacket that was several sizes too large for him. He had no overcoat; the evening was cold and he shivered.
“He said he was hungry and could I spare him a bite of food? Since I'd no kitchen staff available, I opened the door and let him come inside.”
“That was a mistake, Miz Kerrigan,” Martin said.
Kate smiled.
“Miles, over the years I've let many men into this house. Geronimo once sat where you're sitting. We had tea and cake and he wanted to talk about old Queen Vic.”
The lawman stirred uncomfortably in his chair and glanced over his shoulder, as though he expected to see the old Apache's ghost glowering at him from a corner.
“Well, I led the way to the kitchen and the man followed me. He said his name was Tom and that he was looking for ranch work. He had the most singular eyes, rather mean and foxy, like those I used to see in some Texas gunmen back in the old days. I must admit, I did not trust him.”
“You did right,” Martin said. “Not trusting him, I mean.”
“Thank you, Miles. I'm sure your approval will stand me in good stead should you consider hanging me.”
“Miz Kerrigan! I have no intention . . . I mean . . . I wouldn't . . .”
Kate gave the flustered lawman a dazzling smile.
“There, there, Miles, don't distress yourself. I'm certain the facts of the case will speak for themselves and banish all doubt from your mind.”
“Yes, yes, I'm sorry. Please proceed.”
Martin was fifty years old and Kate Kerrigan could still make him blush.
“I fixed the man some beef sandwiches, and indeed, he was as wolf hungry as he professed,” Kate said. “It was after he'd eaten heartily that things took a dangerous turn.”
“Was the sugar scattered all over the kitchen floor part of it?” Martin said.
“Indeed it was. A small sugar sack had been left on the counter by a careless maid and Tom, if that was really his name—”
“It wasn't,” Martin said.
Kate looked at him in surprise.
“Please go on, Miz Kerrigan,” the lawman said.
“Well, the man jumped up, grabbed the sugar sack, and threw the contents over the floor. He shoved the empty sack at me and said, ‘You, fill this. The jewels you're wearing first.'”
“‘Mister,'” I said, “‘I've been threatened by more dangerous bad men than you.'”
Martin reached into the pocket of his coat and withdrew a revolver.
“Then he drew this on you.”
Kate glanced at the gun.
“Yes, that's it, a Hopkins & Allen in thirty-two caliber. He said to fill the sack or he'd scatter my brains.”
“Oh, Miz Kerrigan, you must have been terrified,” Martin said.
Kate shook her head.
“Miles, you've known me how long? Thirty years? You should remember by now I don't scare easily.” She frowned. “And for God's sake, call me Kate. You never called me anything else until I got this big house and eight hundred thousand acres of range to go with it.”
Now it was the lawman's turn to smile.
“Kate it is, and you're right, you never did scare worth a damn, beggin' your pardon.”
“I also used to cuss, Miles, before I became a lady.”
“You were always a lady, Kate. Even when all you had to your name was a cabin and a milk cow and a passel of young 'uns.”
Kate nodded.
“Hard times in Texas back in those days after the war.”
“We'll wind it up,” Martin said. “It's growing late and I'm only going through the motions anyhow.”
“The fact remains that I killed a man tonight, Miles. It's your duty to hear me out.”
Kate rose and poured more brandy from the decanter into the lawman's glass and then her own.
She sat by the fire again and said, “When the man pointed the gun at me, I took off my necklace and bracelets and dropped them in the sack. He wanted my wedding ring, but I refused. When he looked at it and saw it was but a cheap silver band, he demanded the expensive stuff.
“I told him I kept my jewelry in my bedroom and he told me to take him there. He also made an extremely crude suggestion and vowed he'd have his way with me.”
“The damned rogue,” Martin said, his mustache bristling.
“In my day I've heard worse than that, but right then I knew I was in real danger.”
Kate's elegant fingers strayed to the simple cross that now hung around her neck.
“There's not much left to tell, Miles. I played the petrified, hysterical matron to perfection and when we went upstairs I told the robber that my jewels were in my dresser drawer.”
Kate smiled.
“How often men are undone by their lusts. The wretch was so intent on unbuttoning the back of my dress that he didn't see me reach into the dresser drawer and produce—not diamonds—but my old Colt forty-four.”
“Bravo!” Martin said, lifting his booted feet off the rug and clicking his heels.
“I wrenched away from him, leveled my revolver, and ordered him to drop his gun. His face twisted into a most demonic mask and he cursed and raised his gun.”
“The murderous rogue!” Martin said.
“I fired,” Kate said. “John Wesley Hardin once told me to belly shoot a man and I'd drop him in his tracks. I followed Wes's advice—the only bit of good advice he ever gave me or mine—and hit the bandit where a respectable man's watch fob would have been.”
“But he got off a shot,” Martin said. He reached into his pocket again and held up the spent .32. “Dug it out of your bedroom wall.”
“Yes, he got off a shot, but he was already a dead man. He dropped to the floor, groaned for a few moments, and then all the life in him left.”
“Kate, you've been through a terrible ordeal,” Martin said.
“I've been through it before, Miles. The man who came here was intent on raping and robbing me. I fight to keep what is mine, whether it's a diamond ring or a single head of cattle. I've hanged rustlers and other men who would threaten Ciarogan, and as God as my witness I'll do it again if I have to.”
Sheriff Martin's eyes revealed that he believed every word Kate had just said.
He'd known some tough, fighting ranchers, but none even came close to Kate Kerrigan's grit and determination.
She'd built an empire, then held it against all comers, an amazon in petticoats.
Martin built a cigarette and without looking up from the makings, he spoke.
“His name was Frank Ross. He'd served five years of a life sentence in Huntsville for murder and rape when he killed a guard and escaped. He later murdered a farmer and his wife near Leesville and stole three dollars and a horse.”
Martin lit his cigarette.
“Then he came here.”
“Miles, why didn't you tell me all this before?” Kate said.
“After what you've gone through, I didn't want to alarm you.”
Martin read the question on the woman's face and shrank from the green fire in her eyes. She had an Irish temper, did Kate Kerrigan, and the sheriff wanted no part of it.
“I got a wire a couple of days ago from the Leesburg marshal and he warned that Ross could come this way,” he said. “I never thought it could happen the way it did.”
“It did happen,” Kate said.
“Yes, Kate, I know, and I'm sorry.”
Martin rose to his feet.
“I'll be going now. One of my deputies took the body away. You should know that. I'll see myself out.”
The big lawman stepped to the door, his spurs chiming.
He stopped and said, “My respects to your fine family.”
“And mine to Mrs. Martin.”
Martin nodded.
“I'll be sure to tell her that.”
 
 
Kate Kerrigan had defended herself and her honor, just another battle to stand alongside all the others that had gone before.
But the killing of Frank Ross hung heavy on her, and she felt the need for closeness, to hold something her husband, dead so many years, had touched.
All she had was the ring on her finger . . . and the letter that had begun it all.
Kate walked to her office, unlocked the writing bureau, and took the worn, yellowed scrap of paper from a drawer.
She returned to the parlor, poured herself brandy, and sat again by the ashy fire.
After a while, she opened the letter and read it again for perhaps the thousandth time . . . the letter that had founded a dynasty.

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