PINNACLE BOOKS

      Kensington Publishing Corp.

       www.kensingtonbooks.com

      Give them great meals of beef

       and iron and steel,

       they will eat like wolves

       and fight like devils.

      —William Shakespeare, King Henry V

      I reckon we’ve always liked a ruckus

       just a mite too much.

      —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 1

      “We’re gettin’ too old for this,” Scratch Morton said.

      “Amen,” Bo Creel agreed. “But we signed on to do it. We don’t have any choice but to get it done.”

      He lifted the posthole digger and brought it down hard against the rocky ground. The blades didn’t penetrate very far into the stubborn dirt. With a sigh, Bo lifted the digger and then slammed it down again. He pulled the handles apart, lifted them, turned to empty a pathetic amount of dirt onto a pile that seemed to be growing with infinite slowness.

      Then he threw the digger and said with uncharacteristic anger, “Damn it, I hate digging postholes!”

      Scratch stepped forward. “Lemme work on it for a while. You can unload the next roll of wire from the wagon.”

      The New Mexico sun beat down mercilessly on the two old friends. They were stripped to the waist, revealing fish-belly-white torsos that had started to thicken with age but were still muscular and powerful.

      Despite not having any shirts on, both men still wore their hats. Scratch’s headgear, in keeping with his personality as something of a dandy, was a big, cream-colored Stetson that was beginning to show some wear but retained vestiges of its fanciness…much like the man who wore it.

      Bo’s hat was plain, flat-crowned, black. He didn’t put on any airs. He just wanted something to keep the sun off his head.

      They were working in a semi-arid valley bordered by low hills on the south and a string of rugged mesas on the north. The range on which they had parked the ranch wagon was part of Big John Peeler’s Circle JP ranch, but the cattleman’s land ended here and Bo and Scratch had been given the job of stringing barbed wire from the hills to the mesas to mark that boundary.

      Bo sat down for a second on the wagon’s lowered tailgate and pulled off his work gloves so he could wipe sweat off his face, which was tanned to a permanent shade matching that of saddle leather. “I don’t see why somebody had to go and invent that blasted devil wire in the first place,” he complained bitterly.

      Scratch dug the posthole digger into the ground. The blades grated in the gravelly soil. He grinned over at Bo.

      “You’re the one who always talks about what a good thing progress is. I thought you liked civilization.”

      “Not when I have to dig holes for posts to string it on.”

      “I know what you mean.” Scratch drove the digger into the ground again. “I sort of miss the open range days, too. But once everybody gets wire strung up, I reckon there won’t be near as many range wars.”

      Bo shook his head. “Folks’ll just find something else to fight over.”

      “Well, ain’t you a gloomy cuss today. Look at it this way…You’re out in the fresh air, ain’t you? You ain’t wearin’ an apron, stuck behind some store counter somewhere, clerkin’ or sweepin’ up in a saloon. That’s all most folks think fellas our age are good for anymore.”

      Bo took off his hat and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah, I guess you’ve got a point.”

      The digger’s blades chunked into the ground again. “Sure I do. Nobody’s shootin’ at us, either, and that’s a welcome change, ain’t it?”

      Bo gazed off into the distance and said quietly, “I’m not so sure.”

      He wasn’t seeing the sweeping vistas of the landscape outside of Socorro, New Mexico Territory. Instead, in his mind’s eye he saw the decades that had rolled by since he and Scratch had left Texas.

      It had been an adventurous life. Bo had needed plenty of adventure to help him forget the pain of losing his wife and children to sickness, and his old friend Scratch had been more than willing to help provide it. As boys, they had fought side by side against Santa Anna’s thousands at the Battle of San Jacinto where Texas had won its independence. That had given Scratch an appetite for excitement he had never gotten over.

      As grown men they had drifted, from south of the Rio Grande to north of the Canadian border. They had seen the stately flow of the Mississippi past grand homes in Memphis and Vicksburg, and they had stood on cliffs and looked out over the vast Pacific Ocean as its waves crashed powerfully on the rocks below them. They had ridden through deserts, climbed high mountain passes, seen giant redwoods reaching for the heavens. They had known the solitude of far, lonely places, as well as the smoky camaraderie of saloons and gambling dens and bunkhouses.

      There had been some trouble along the way, of course, because Bo and Scratch, being Texans born-bred-and-forever, naturally couldn’t stand aside and do nothing when they saw someone being threatened or taken advantage of. They had a deep and abiding dislike of outlaws, bullies, cheap gunmen, tinhorn gamblers, whoremongers, horse thieves, con artists, and all other sorts of miscreants. Scratch liked to say that they were peaceable men who never went looking for a ruckus to get into. The truth of that statement was debatable.

      But by and large, it had been a good life, and Bo was damned if he understood how he and Scratch had wound up here in this hellhole, doing the most menial labor available to cowpunchers, for a jackass like Big John Peeler. They’d had quite a bit of money in their poke when they came up out of Mexico, following a little dustup down there.

      “Red Cloud,” Bo said softly.

      Scratch paused in his digging. “The old Indian chief?”

      Bo