LOOK FOR THESE EXCITING WESTERN SERIES

  FROM BESTSELLING AUTHORS

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE AND J.A. JOHNSTONE

  The Mountain Man

  Luke Jensen: Bounty Hunter

  Brannigan’s Land

  The Jensen Brand

  Smoke Jensen: The Early Years

  Preacher and MacCallister

  Fort Misery

  The Fighting O’Neils

  Perley Gates

  MacCoole and Boone

  Guns of the Vigilantes

  Shotgun Johnny

  The Chuckwagon Trail

  The Jackals

  The Slash and Pecos Westerns

  The Texas Moonshiners

  Stoneface Finnegan Westerns

  Ben Savage: Saloon Ranger

  The Buck Trammel Westerns

  The Death and Texas Westerns

  The Hunter Buchanon Westerns

  Will Tanner: U.S. Deputy Marshal

  Old Cowboys Never Die

  Go West, Young Man

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

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  New York, NY 10022

  Copyright © 2026 by 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.

  Without limiting the author’s and publisher’s exclusive rights, any unauthorized use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies i s expressly prohibited.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  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.

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  PINNACLE BOOKS, the Pinnacle logo, and the WWJ steer head logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  First Pinnacle Trade Paperback Printing: March 2026

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-5224-0

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-5225-7 (ebook)

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  CONTENTS

  Look for these Exciting Western Series

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  CHAPTER 1

  Clay Carson thought he’d gotten over being jumpy.

  As the buckboard rattled along the dusty Texas road, he kept glancing over his shoulder. Worse, he slid his foot over to rest against the stock of his rifle. A deft kick could lift it for a quick grab. He knew from experience he could lever in a round, aim, and fire in the blink of an eye. Too many varmints had doubted that and now lay dead, scattered across Texas and Indian Territory.

  A few of the varmints had been men who were inclined to put an ounce or two of lead into his hide. So far, he had always beaten them to the draw. But those were the old days. At least a year in the past. Carson had no reason now to suspect every stranger he saw or worry about a lone rider on the road behind him. He had no reason—but old habits died hard, especially when they had kept him alive.

  He wished he had his trusty six-gun slung at his hip, but the rifle would do, provided he kept trouble at a distance.

  “What’s got into me today?”

  The mule pulling the buckboard ignored him. It kept its flop-eared head down, straining to pull its load. While out plowing and tending the fields, the mule, named Solomon for its stubborn wisdom, had been his only company on the lonely farm for most of the past year. Carson had come to trust the animal more than he did most men. Solomon didn’t ask questions, didn’t pry into the past, and never judged.

  “Maybe it’s been too quiet. Maybe I can’t help but think it’s time for the other boot to drop.”

  Even his own reassuring words did nothing to prevent him from looking behind him again.

  Nothing.

  He rode along the empty road, the vast flat prairie land stretching as far as the eye could see—miles of open space without a living soul in sight. The mesquite and live oaks stood like lonely sentinels scattered here and there, while wind-devils spun dust into the air and vanished just as quick. Overhead, the sun hung low and hot, turning sweat stains into permanent tattoos on his shirt.

  He snapped the reins, urging Solomon to move along a little faster. The sooner he got to town, loaded supplies for the farm, and returned to his cozy niche that had been his home for nigh on a year, the easier he’d breathe.

  The town appeared first as a shimmery mirage, then hardened into real buildings with a few people moving around between them. Several old men, propped up in chairs under shady awnings, waved to him as he drove past. He returned their greeting.

  He might be the only thing out of the ordinary for them all day.

  Ferguson wasn’t the crossroads of anywhere.

  Since the railroad had bypassed the town a couple years back, it had hung on by the skin of its teeth. Many businesses had pulled up stakes, moving closer to the steel rails to chase prosperity, while others simply shuttered their doors for good.

  That was one reason he’d decided to stay here.

  The nearsighted, overweight town marshal hadn’t so much as looked at a Wanted poster in years. Carson had once heard him bragging about using them to start fires in his potbellied stove, to keep warm in the winter and to brew his vile coffee year-round. With a sleepy marshal like that, and a town that saw few travelers, Ferguson was the perfect place for a man hankering to stay lost.

  Clay Carson smiled crookedly at the thought. The law from half a dozen other towns had probably given up hunting for him. Other crimes must occupy their interest by now.

  He still looked around, taking special care to check his back trail. Old habits died hard.

  He climbed down and stretched his cramped limbs. He was lean and still mean—he hoped—but Father Time was beginning to take his due. Working on the cotton farm was still easy enough for him, though some nights required a liberal application of horse liniment to ease his aching muscles. Other mornings not even the potent liniment worked out the kinks in his back for him to face another day toiling in the field.

  A quick look in the window of Ferguson’s only general store showed the reflection of a man edging into his middle years. He tugged his straw hat down to hide the retreating hairline of what had once been a full head of brown hair. He was beginning to look too much like all the old-timers in town, which bothered him.

  “You need to grow back that big, bushy beard, Mr. Carson. I thought it looked real fine when you first came to Ferguson.”

  The woman speaking stood in the doorway, leaning on a broom. The pile of dust around her feet showed that she would never win against the persistent grit, but was too stubborn to admit defeat. Even a touch of breeze caused swirls to form faster than anyone, even someone dedicated to the pursuit, could sweep it all back into the street, where it belonged.

  “Miz Cline.” He touched the brim of his straw hat. “You’re looking mighty fine today.”

  “You’re such a liar,” she
said, gracing him with a bright grin. “But don’t you stop now, you hear?”

  She pushed a stray wisp of graying hair back toward the bun perched on her head.

  “You’re not buttering me up to give you more credit, now are you?”

  “That’s between Mr. Cline and my boss.”

  “You’re more pleasant to talk to than Frank Bellamy,” she said. “And to look at. If you’re doing the asking, I’ll be doing the agreeing.”

  She flirted with him because they both knew it passed the time and wouldn’t amount to anything. Dottie Cline was firmly married to Ezra. Even if she hadn’t been so devoted to the crusty owner of the store, Carson wasn’t inclined to make a play for her. As affable as she was, she reminded him too much of his third-grade teacher in Arkansas who had made life miserable, if not downright intolerable, because of her hectoring.

  That had been the same year his ma died of tetanus. He’d never been happier to move on with his itinerant snake-oil-selling pa and his endless parade of ladies. The education he got was more about people than book learning, but along the way he had developed a taste for dime novels. The more lurid, the better. He took special interest in yarns about the outlaws. Wild imaginations fueled those stories, which he knew firsthand. Someday, he’d try his hand at writing one with real characters and situations.

  Most likely, editors would reject those stories because they would seem too wild, if not downright loco.

  “Mr. Bellamy needs fifty pounds of flour, what sugar you can spare, and his missus wants a dozen spools of thread she saw in your window last time she was in town.”

  “You get Ezra to help you load the flour. I’ve got a five-pound bag of sugar set aside, but the thread?” Dottie Cline pursed her lips. “Don’t rightly know if I have that many spools anymore. I’ll check in the back room.”

  “Will that take long?”

  “Not if you help me,” she teased.

  “If I did that, we’d spend the rest of the day hunting.”

  “Then why don’t you go on over to the Horny Toad and wet your whistle? I won’t be too long, I don’t think.” She frowned, pushing the broom ahead of her as she vanished into the store.

  Carson heard Ezra Cline growling like a hungry bobcat as she dragged him into the storeroom.

  Knowing the search for the elusive thread would take a spell, Carson turned toward the town’s only saloon.

  At this time of day, it was as deserted as a ghost town. He poked his head in and looked around. The barkeep sat on a stool at the end of the bar, head on his crossed arms and snoring up a storm.

  Carson wasn’t particularly thirsty. Certainly not enough to risk waking the barkeep. The man had a temper. Disturbing his hibernation brought out the grizzly in him. Besides, two half-drunk customers ran bugs up the barkeep’s arm racing for some finish line under his collar. Whichever bug won would awake a sleeping behemoth.

  That was more excitement than Carson wanted.

  Carson backed out and looked around town. Over the past year, he’d been here on errands dozens of times. Sometimes he brought in bales of cotton to ship over to San Angelo when the mule skinners drove their wagons in. Other times, like today, he hauled supplies for the farm. Keeping two sections of farmland under cultivation took considerable effort—and not a little backbreaking work. At least he didn’t have to do it alone. The Bellamy sons were good workers, but they were close to the age of wanting to spread their wings and fly away from home and hearth.

  He could tell them about the world away from their farm. It might curl their hair. Or it might intrigue them so much they’d leave right away. With things the way they were in the Bellamy family, Frank wouldn’t take kindly to anything that drove his two boys away.

  Carson settled into a chair by the two swinging batwing doors and rocked back like the old men he’d seen on his way to the general store.

  It felt wrong doing nothing. It made him antsy when he wasn’t on his feet, doing and fetching and losing himself in work.

  What it really meant was his guilt hadn’t faded one whit over the past year, and he jumped at shadows. That made him wonder if it wasn’t time to ride on. If he made an effort, he could reach Montana in a month or so. Or California. He’d never seen the Pacific Ocean, nor had anyone he’d ever ridden with. The descriptions in books he read made it sound odd and dangerously wonderful, especially for the men in ships crossing to China or curling around the Horn to reach far-off Boston.

  As exciting as that sounded, he’d never want to go that far across endless stretches of water. He could barely swim, not that a sailor had much need for such skills. If a ship went down a hundred miles offshore, none of the crew could swim to safety on dry land unless they grew gills and tail fins.

  “Stay astride a good horse with solid ground under my hooves,” he said. Sailing off to the Orient was daring and worth reading about. He’d have to content himself with something less adventurous—and with the chance of walking to the next town if his horse pulled up lame.

  “Carson! Clay Carson!”

  At the sound of his name, he rocked forward and tensed. His hand pressed hard into his right hip. All he felt was the rough expanse of his jeans. His six-gun hung in its holster from a peg in the barn back at the farm. And his rifle was still in the buckboard.

  “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  The smallish man ran up to him, waving a dingy white envelope.

  “It’s just that I was glad to see you, so I didn’t have to ride all the way out to Frank’s place to give you this.”

  He thrust out an acid-stained hand holding the envelope. Dark brown spots marred his fingers where sulfuric acid had eaten away the skin. When the man moved just right, so he turned upwind, the stench of lead and acid was enough to churn Carson’s stomach.

  Carson wondered how the telegrapher endured his life cooped up in the Texas and Pacific Telegraph office. Fumes rose from the lead-acid batteries and made anyone used to being outdoors choke and cough. Carson felt his nose stopping up and his eyes watering as he thought about the last time he’d gone to the office to send a telegraph for Mr. Bellamy.

  “I just lost my balance in the chair,” Carson lied. “You have a ’gram for Mr. Bellamy?”

  The telegrapher’s woolly-worm eyebrows wiggled about. He shook his head, checked the name on the envelope, and then thrust it out.

  “No, sir, it’s for you.”

  Carson froze. Nobody knew he was in Ferguson.

  “You mean you want me to take it to Mr. Bellamy?”

  “Nope, not a lick of it, Mr. Carson. This here’s for you. It came over the wires in the middle of last night.”

  Carson stared at the man.

  “I know what you’re thinking. How’s he record a ’gram that comes in at three in the morning? Well, sir, I work long hours and just happened to be behind the bug—that’s what we professionals call that telegraph key—when the clacking started. Here.” He stepped forward and shoved the envelope within inches of Carson’s grasp, as if afraid he’d get his hand bit by a rabid dog.

  Carson stared at the paper.

  “You take care now, Mr. Carson, sir. And don’t you go killing anybody.” The telegrapher backed away, wiped his sweaty palms on his pant legs, and almost ran off.

  Carson looked up and down Ferguson’s main street. These days it was about the town’s only street, unless alleys and rutted paths counted as streets. He saw nothing unusual.

  Hands quaking, he tore open the envelope. A quick scan did nothing to stop the shakes. It was worse than he’d feared.

  He understood why the telegrapher had hightailed it like he had the pox. The man had written every letter as it came from Hidetown, at the far northwest corner of the Panhandle. He had received a wire from the most infamous outlaw in Texas who wasn’t John Wesley Hardin. Carson forced himself to read the telegram three times, to be sure it said what he feared:

  Come pronto STOP

  Need to dig up Fort Worth loot before I die STOP

  /s/ Lemuel Jones

  CHAPTER 2

  Clay Carson stuffed the telegram into a vest pocket. For a long moment, he stood frozen to the spot. He had ridden long miles and taken curious turns to avoid anyone finding him. Lemuel Jones had shown himself to be as crafty as Carson had always known he was. Somehow, the man had tracked him down and sent the message to his hidey-hole.

  “Dying?” Carson pushed his hat back on his head and thought about that. Of all the things Jones could have said to get him out of hiding, this was it. That, and mention of the loot from their last disastrous bank robbery in Fort Worth.