THE LAST GUNFIGHTER
Dead Before
Sundown
William W. Johnstone
with J. A. Johnstone
All copyrighted material within is
Attributor Protected.
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2011 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.
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.”
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eISBN 13: 978-0-7860-2782-8
eISBN 10: 0-7860-2782-7
First printing: March 2011
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
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 One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter 1
The storm blew up unexpectedly. At least, Frank Morgan didn’t see it coming, but he was no sailor. He was at home on the back of a horse, not the pitching deck of a boat.
As the Jupiter made a run for shore, Frank stood at the railing, his hands clutching the smooth wood, and watched the dark clouds looming behind the ship. A hard wind blew, and the waves that jutted up from the water reminded Frank of gray fangs waiting to chew the life out of him.
Frank was a broad-shouldered man of medium height whose high-crowned, cream-colored Stetson was pulled down tight on his graying dark hair to keep the gusts from blowing it off his head. His faded blue shirt, jeans, and well-worn boots were the outfit of a cowboy, but except on rare occasions, he hadn’t punched cows since he was a young man in Texas.
That was a lot of years in the past, and a long way from here, as well.
The holstered Colt strapped around Frank’s hips told a different story. The revolver’s walnut grips were worn smooth with use. The holster was oiled and supple.
Habitually, Frank’s right hand never strayed far from the gun butt. Even when he was at ease, he was ready to hook and draw at a split-second’s notice.
Frank Morgan was a gunfighter. People called him the Drifter, and that summed up his life pretty well. Considering his age and the deadly speed and skill he still possessed, some said he was the last true gunfighter, the last survivor of the era that had included such notorious pistoleers as John Wesley Hardin, Smoke Jensen, Ben Thompson, Falcon MacCallister, and Matt Bodine.
Hardin and Thompson were dead now, treacherously gunned down by their enemies. Smoke Jensen was living the peaceful life of a rancher in Colorado, the last Frank had heard. That made him a rarity among men who had lived by the gun. Nearly all of them had died by it, too. Frank didn’t know what had happened to MacCallister and Bodine. He had lost track of them over the years.
As for Frank, he was still drifting, still winding up in one fracas after another despite his intention to avoid trouble, and lately his wanderings had carried him to the far north, to the gold-rich Yukon country along the border between Alaska and Canada. He had survived a harrowing adventure there and had returned briefly to the Alaskan port of Skagway to settle a score, only to find that fate had already taken care of that for him.
Now he was on the Jupiter, sailing south toward Seattle, Washington, but this squall had come up and forced the ship to turn toward the Canadian coast to avoid it.
A woman’s voice came from behind him on the whipping wind. “Frank? What are you doing out here?”
He glanced over his shoulder and saw Meg Goodwin standing there on the deck. Her hands were thrust into the pockets of her jeans to protect them from the cold. It was summer, but in this part of the world when the storm winds blew, they were chilly, no matter what the season.
Meg was a mighty attractive sight, what with the blond hair that escaped from under her flat-crowned brown hat whipping around her face. She was dressed like a man in jeans, a buckskin shirt, and a denim jacket, but there was no mistaking the fact that her trim, shapely figure belonged to a woman.
Frank was old enough to be Meg’s father, and because of that there was nothing romantic between them—although she had made it clear on more than one occasion that she wouldn’t mind that in the least—but he was objective enough to know she was a very pretty gal.
She could shoot as well as most men, too, a fact she had proven during Frank’s perilous sojourn to Alaska.
He didn’t answer the question she had asked him. Instead he said, “Where’s Salty?”
Their friend Salty Stevens, the third member of the unofficial trio that was traveling together, was an old-timer, even older than Frank. Salty had been knocking around the frontier for decades, working as a stagecoach driver, Army scout, and range detective, among other odd jobs he had held. He had run into some bad luck when he went north to the Yukon to prospect for gold, but then good luck had found him in the person of Frank Morgan.
“He’s down in his cabin, like you should be,” Meg said. “If that storm catches us and the ship starts pitching around, you’re liable to fall off!”
Frank smiled. “Don’t worry. If she starts bucking like a wild bronc, I’ll go below. I reckon there’s a good chance the captain’s going to get us ashore before that happens, though.”
He pointed to the dark line that was visible through the gloom on the horizon.