PINNACLE BOOKS

      Kensington Publishing Corp.

       www.kensingtonbooks.com

      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 THIRTY-FOUR

      CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

      ONE

      I was mindin’ my daily business in the two-holer when I got rudely interrupted. Now I like a little privacy, but this morning I got me a bullet instead. There I was, peacefully studying the female undies in the Montgomery Ward catalog, when this here slug slams through the door and exits through the rear, above my head.

      “Hey!” I yelled, but no one said nothing.

      “You out there. Don’t you try nothing. This here’s the law talking. I’m coming after you.”

      But I sure didn’t know who or what was in the yard behind Belle’s roomin’ house. I thought maybe a horse was snorting or pawing clay, but I couldn’t be sure of it. I wanted to see what was what, but the half-moon that let in fresh air was high up above me, and I had my business to look after just then. You can’t do nothing in the middle of business.

      I don’t know about you, but I wear my hat when I’m in the two-holer, just on general principles. A man should wear a hat in the crapper. That’s my motto. It was a peaceful enough morning in the town of Doubtful, in Puma County, Wyoming, where I was sheriff, more or less. So that riled me some, that bullet that slapped through there knocking my good five-X gray felt beaver Stetson topper, which teetered on the other hole but did not drop. If it had dropped down there, I’d a been plumb peeved.

      I thought for a moment I oughta follow that hat through the hole and get my bare bottom down there in the perfumed vault, but that was plum sickening, and besides, how could I slide a hundred fifty pounds of rank male through that little round hole? I don’t need no more smell than I’ve already got. When I pull my boots off, people head for the doors holding their noses. It just wouldn’t work. If someone was gonna kill me, they held all the aces.

      The truth of it was that I wasn’t finished with my business, and all I could do was sit there and finish up my private duties, and rip a page out of the Monkey Ward catalog, and get it over with. Like the rest of us who used the two-holer behind Belle’s boardinghouse, I was inclined to study ladies’ corsets and bloomers and garters for entertainment, saving the wipe-off for the pages brimming with one-bottom plows, buggy whips, and bedpans. Them others in Belle’s boardinghouse, they felt like I did, and no female undie pages ever got torn out of the catalog. That sure beat corncobs, I’ll tell you.

      “Sheriff, you come outa there with your hands up and your pants down,” someone yelled. I thought maybe I knew the feller doin’ all that yelling, but it was hard to tell, sitting there with pages of chemises and petticoats on my lap.

      “Hold your horses,” I said. “I ain’t done, and the longer it takes, the better for you, because I’m likely to bust out of here with lead flying in all directions.”

      That fetched me a nasty laugh, and I knew that laugh, and I thought maybe I was in more of a jam than I’d imagined.

      But no more bullets came sailing through, and I finished up, and ripped out a page of men’s union suits, and another page of hay rakes and spades, and got it over with. I wasn’t gonna bust out of there with my pants down, no matter what, so I stood, got myself arranged and buttoned up, drew out my service revolver, and with a violent shove, threw myself out the door and dodged to the left just to avoid any incoming lead.

      It sure didn’t do me no good. As my mama used to tell me, don’t do nothing foolish.

      Sure enough, there before me were eight, nine ratty-assed cowboys on horses, all of the lot waving black revolvers in my direction, just in case I got notions. And also a dude with a buckboard, holding some reins.

      “I shoulda known,” I said to the boss, who was the man I figgered it was.

      “I told you to come out with your pants down, and you didn’t. That’s a hanging offense,” the man said. “You do what I say, and when I say it.”

      “My pants is staying put, dammit,” I replied.

      I knew the joker, all right. I’d put his renegade boy in my jail a few months earlier, and now the punk was peering at the blue skies through iron bars. This feller on a shiny red horse waving nickel-plated Smith and Wesson at me was none other than Admiral Bragg. And the boy I was boardin’ in my lockup, he was King Bragg, and his sister, she was Queen Bragg. Mighty strange names bloomed in that family, but who was I to howl? I sure didn’t ask to have Cotton hung on me, and Pickens neither, but that’s how I got stuck, and there wasn’t nothing I could do about it except maybe move to Argentina or Bulgaria.

      Them names weren’t titles neither. Bragg’s ma and pa, they stuck him with the name of Admiral. If he’d of been in the navy, he might have ended up Admiral Admiral Bragg. But the family stuck to its notions, and old Bragg, he named one child King and the other child Queen. It was King Bragg that got himself into big trouble, perforating a few fellers with his six-gun, so I caught him and he would soon pay for his killin’ spree. I think the family was all cheaters. Name a boy Admiral, and the boy’s got a head start, even if he ain’t even close to being an admiral. Name a girl Queen, and she’s got the world bowin’ and scrapin’ even if she ain’t one.

      I was a little nervous, standing there in front of his pa with seven or eight Bragg cowboys pointing their artillery at my chest. Makes a man cautious, I’d say.

      “Drop the peashooter, Sheriff,” Admiral Bragg ordered.

      I thought maybe to lift it up and blow him away, which would have been my last earthy deed. It sure was temptin’ and my old pa, he might’ve approved even as he lowered the coffin. Nothing like goin’ out in style.

      But there was about a thousand grains of lead pointing straight at me, and I chickened