This all came about by the greed and evil machinations of one man, Ike Clinton. In this one man’s twisted mind, the railroad, which would have guaranteed growth and prosperity for Higbee, was a threat, and he set about to stop it.
If a final score is somewhere being kept, let it be known that Ike Clinton succeeded in stopping the railroad, though not in the way he intended. Clinton’s evil greed cost him his own life, as well as the life of his three sons. It also brought about the demise of Kathleen Garrison, a beautiful, innocent young lady who provided meaning to her father’s life.
When Kathleen Garrison was killed, the spark which sustained General Wade Garrison was extinguished. Losing all reason to live, General Garrison stopped the building of the railroad. He left town, a broken and dispirited man, and at last report, was living the life of a recluse in a home for the mentally disturbed in Memphis, Tennessee.
Without the hope of a railroad, that which was sustaining the growth and vibrancy of Higbee, the town withered and died. And now, as I set the type that will reproduce these words, I can only hope that at least one of these journals will survive until some future time, one hundred, or maybe even one hundred fifty years from now. To you, dear reader in the future, I leave these final words. Our town, which will be but a faded shadow in your history, was once bright with hope and promise. And long after the last building has turned to dust, the spirits of such men as Norman True, Carl Moore, Titus, Travis, and Troy Calhoun, General Wade Garrison, Corey and Prentiss Hampton, and such women as the general’s daughter Kathleen, the talented pianist Rachael Kirby, and yes, even the madam, Maggie, will occupy this place until the entire planet returns to dust.
I am Harold Denham, editor and publisher of the Higbee Journal.
I bid thee all a final farewell.
Turn the page for an exciting preview of
BLOOD BOND: RIDE FOR VENGEANCE
by William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone
Coming in June 2008
Wherever Pinnacle Books are sold.
Chapter One
The school in Sweet Apple, Texas, not far from the Rio Grande, wasn’t serving its usual function tonight. The benches and desks had been moved to create a large open space in the middle of the floor, and dancing couples filled that space, swirling around in time to the tunes played by several fiddlers and a trio of Mexicans with guitars. The music was loud and raucous, and so were the stomping feet and the laughter of those attending the dance.
Folks in Sweet Apple were having a high old time.
Matt Bodine leaned against one of the walls of the schoolroom and sighed. “All these pretty gals,” he said, “and not one of them wants to dance with me.”
“Stop complaining,” said Matt’s blood brother, Sam August Webster Two Wolves. “We’re working, remember?”
In truth, probably all of the young, eligible women in Sweet Apple and the vicinity—because everybody within riding distance came to town for a get-together like this—would have been glad to dance with either Matt or Sam, because the blood brothers were both tall, muscular, and handsome. They could have almost passed for real brothers. Matt’s hair was dark brown, while Sam’s was black as a raven’s wing. Matt’s eyes were blue, Sam’s such a dark gray as to be almost black. Sam also had the high cheekbones and slightly reddish cast to his tanned skin that he had inherited from his father, Medicine Horse, a Cheyenne warrior who had been killed at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
Unlike nearly all the other members of his tribe, Medicine Horse had been educated in the East, at a white man’s university. It was there he had met and married Sam’s mother, who when Sam was a young man had insisted that he receive a college education, too.
Matt hadn’t gotten the benefits of such advanced schooling, but he possessed a keen natural intelligence. The son of a pioneer Montana ranching family, he had been Sam Two Wolves’ best friend since both of them were very young men, no more than kids really. Matt had been accepted into the Cheyenne tribe because of his bond with Sam. They were Onihomahan—Brothers of the Wolf.
Although they both owned sizable cattle spreads in Montana, both young men were too fiddle-footed to stay in one place for too long, so for the past few years they had been drifting around the West, usually landing smack-dab in the middle of trouble even though that wasn’t their intention. But they couldn’t turn their backs on folks in trouble, nor pass up the chance for an adventure.
Which was how they’d come to wind up in the rough-and-tumble border town of Sweet Apple, working as unofficial deputies for the town’s lawman, Marshal Seymour Standish. It was a long story involving owlhoots, Mexican revolutionaries (a fancy name for bandidos), and a train car full of U.S. Army rifles. Much powder had been burned. The air in Sweet Apple’s main street had been full of gun smoke and hot lead. Blood had been spilled, including a mite that belonged to Matt Bodine. But in the weeks since that big ruckus, things had been fairly peaceful in town.
Matt and Sam knew that wouldn’t last. It never did.
Tonight they were dressed a little fancier than usual for the dance, Matt in a brown tweed suit instead of his usual jeans and blue bib-front shirt, Sam in dark gray wool instead of his buckskins. They both wore boiled white shirts and string ties. Matt pulled at his collar and grimaced in discomfort and distaste.
“Damn thing feels like a noose,” he muttered. “This must be what it’s like to get strung up.”
“Are you going to complain about everything tonight?” Sam asked.
“I might.” Matt’s eyes followed the slender, graceful, redheaded form of Jessie Colton as she danced with one of the men from Sweet Apple.
“Oh,” Sam said. “I understand now. You’re mad because you haven’t gotten to dance with Jessie yet.”
“I saw you eyein’ Sandy Paxton,” Matt shot back. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t rather be out there with her instead of standin’ here holdin’ up this damned wall.”
“We’re doing more than that. We’re keeping an eye on the men from the Double C and Pax.”
Matt had to admit that those cowboys did need to be kept an eye on. Like the men who rode for all the other spreads in the area, the hands from the Double C and Pax ranches had come into Sweet Apple for the dance. They all knew that hostilities had to be put aside at the door. That was the plan anyway. Whether or not it worked might be another story entirely.
Once Pax and Double C had been one vast ranch, owned by cousins Esau Paxton and Shadrach Colton. Matt and Sam knew that much, but they had no idea why, somewhere along the way, the spread had been broken in two and Paxton and Colton had become bitter enemies. That was the case, though, and the feud was still going on.
Since Western men rode for the brand, the enemies of a cowboy’s boss became the cowboy’s enemies, too. That feeling had led to more than one brawl between riders from the two ranches. Here lately, as sort-of deputies, Matt and Sam had been forced to break up some of those ruckuses.