PINNACLE BOOKS

      Kensington Publishing Corp.

       www.kensingtonbooks.com

      Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble.

      —Job 14:1

      We’re peaceable men, I tell you.

      —Scratch Morton

      Contents

      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 1

      “All I’m sayin’ is that a man who ain’t prepared to lose hadn’t ought to sit down at the table in the first place,” Scratch Morton argued as he and his trail partner Bo Creel rode along a draw in a rugged stretch of Arizona Territory.

      “You didn’t have to rub his nose in it like that,” Bo pointed out. “That cowboy probably wouldn’t have gotten mad enough to reach for his gun if you’d just stayed out of it.”

      “Stay out of it, hell! He practically accused you of cheatin’. I couldn’t let him get away with that, old-timer.”

      There was a certain irony in Scratch referring to Bo as “old-timer.” The two men were of an age. Their birthdays were less than a month apart. It was true, though, that Bo was a few weeks older. And neither Bo nor Scratch was within shouting distance of youth anymore. Their deeply tanned, weathered faces, Scratch’s thatch of silver hair, and the strands of gray in Bo’s thick, dark brown hair testified to that.

      The Arizona sun had prompted both men to remove their jackets as they rode. Scratch normally sported a fringed buckskin jacket that went well with his tan whipcord trousers and creamy Stetson. He liked dressing well.

      Bo, on the other hand, usually wore a long black coat that, along with his black trousers and dusty, flat-crowned black hat, made him look like a circuit-riding preacher. He didn’t have a preacher’s hands, though. His long, nimble fingers were made for playing cards—or handling a gun.

      He had been engaged in the former at a saloon up in Prescott when the trouble broke out. One of the other players, a gangling cowboy with fiery red hair, had gotten upset at losing his stake to Bo. Scratch, who hadn’t been in the game but had been nursing a beer at the bar instead, hadn’t helped matters by wandering over to the felt-covered table and hoorawing the angry waddy. Accusations flew, and the cowboy had wound up making a grab for the gun on his hip.

      “Anyway, it ain’t like you had to kill him or anything like that,” Scratch went on now. “He probably had a headache when he woke up from you bendin’ your gun over his skull like that, but he could’a woke up dead just as easy.”

      “And what if that saloon had been full of other fellas who rode for the same brand?” Bo asked. “Then we’d have had a riot on our hands. We might have had to shoot our way out.”

      Scratch grinned. “Wouldn’t be the first time, now would it?”

      That was true enough. Bo sighed. Trouble had a longstanding habit of following them around, despite their best intentions.

      Friends ever since they had met as boys in Texas, during the Runaway Scrape when it looked like ol’ General Santa Anna would wipe the place clean of the Texicans who were rebelling against his dictatorship, Bo and Scratch had been together through times of triumph and tragedy. They had been on the drift for nigh on to forty years, riding from one end of the frontier to the other and back again, always searching for an elusive something.

      For Scratch it was sheer restlessness, a natural urge to see what was on the other side of the next hill, to cross the next river, to kiss the next good-lookin’ woman and have the next adventure. With Bo it was a more melancholy quest, an attempt to escape the memories of the wife and children taken from him by a killer fever, many years earlier. All the fiddle-footed years had dulled that pain, but Bo had come to realize that nothing could ever take it away completely.

      After the ruckus with the redheaded cowboy, they had drifted northward from Prescott toward the Verde River, the low but rugged range of the Santa Marias to their left. Some taller, snowcapped mountains were visible in the far, far distance to the northeast. Flagstaff lay in that direction. Maybe they would circle around and go there next.

      It didn’t really matter. They had no plans except to keep riding and see where the trails took them.

      Changing the subject from the earlier fracas, Scratch went on. “I think we ought to find us some shade and wait out the rest of the afternoon. It’s gettin’ on toward hot-as-hell o’clock.”

      Bo laughed and said, “You’re right. Where do you suggest we find that shade?”

      He waved a hand at the barren hills surrounding the sandy-bottomed draw where they rode. The only colors in sight were brown and tan and red. Not a bit of green. Not even a cactus.

      Scratch rasped a thumbnail along his jawline and shrugged. “Yeah, that might be a little hard to do. Could be a cave or somethin’ up in those hills, though. Even a little overhang would give us some shade.”

      Bo nodded and turned his horse to the left. “I guess it would be worth taking a look.”

      They had just reached the slope of a nearby hill when both men heard a familiar sound. A series of shots ripped through the hot, still air. The popping of revolvers was interspersed with the dull boom of a shotgun. Bo and Scratch reined in sharply and looked at each other.

      “Sounds like trouble,” Scratch said. “We gonna turn around and go the other way?”

      “What do you think?” Bo asked, and for a second his sober demeanor was offset by the reckless gleam that appeared in his eyes.

      The two drifters from Texas yelled to their horses, dug their boot heels into the animals’ sides, and galloped up the hill. The shots were coming from somewhere on the other side.

      Bo was riding a mouse-colored dun with a darker stripe down its back, an ugly horse with more speed and sand than was evident from its appearance. Scratch was mounted on a big, handsome bay that was somewhat dandified like its rider. Both horses were strong and took the slope without much trouble. Within moments,