Stand Up and Die. William W. Johnstone

      PROLOGUE

      About a week or two after Matt McCulloch had settled into the dugout he called home on what once had been a sprawling horse ranch in that rough land known as West Texas, he remembered the dream that had happened before all this death, misery, and hardships had begun.

      The old Comanche warrior appeared in the middle of a dust devil that spun as furiously as a tornado. When the wind died, dozens of wild mustangs parted, snorting fire from nostrils and hooves looking like something in a Renaissance Era painting of old Lucifer himself. An old Comanche, face scarred, braids of dark hair wrapped in otter skins that dripped with blood, emerged from thick clouds of dust and walked through the gate of the corral. He walked through the damned wood. Didn’t bother opening the gate. The old man walked straight to the dugout where Matt stood, curious but not frightened.

      “You will travel far.” The warrior spoke in Comanche, but McCulloch understood as though the warrior spoke with a thick Texas drawl.

      “How far?”

      “Farther than you have ever gone in all your life. Farther than you will ever go.”

      “Where will I travel?” McCulloch asked the apparition.

      “To a place far away.”

      “How far?”

      “Into the hell that you in this country call the Territory of Arizona.”

      “Where?” McCulloch asked again. He had little patience for men or spirits who spoke in riddles.

      “It is a place known as the Dead River.”

      McCulloch shook his head. He remembered understanding the Comanche . . . but didn’t know how he could have. Hell, the Indian could have been speaking Russian, for all he knew. He could have been a lousy white actor playing a damned redskin in some stupid play at the opera house in El Paso for all that Matt McCulloch could tell. He remembered every detail. He could describe the designs on the shield slipped over the Indian’s left arm, the quillwork on his beaded leather war shirt . . . the number of rawhide strips wrapped around the otter skins that held his long braids together.

      Even the number, length, and colors of the scalps secured by rawhide on the sleeves of his medicine shirt.

      He remembered the old warrior telling him he would travel farther than he would ever go “until the time comes when you must travel to your own Happy Hunting Ground.”

      Some drunks in saloons might have silently chuckled at a vision or a dream or a damned big windy using such a ridiculous cliché, but none doubted that it was exactly what he had heard—he was Matt McCulloch. He had been branded a jackal, along with bounty hunter Jed Breen and former army sergeant Sean Keegan who had taken the mystical, violent journey with him. His word was as good as any marker an honest gambler put up in Purgatory City. If any honest man ever set foot in the roughshod Texas town.

      McCulloch remembered everything, including his last question: “And what awaits me at this place in the Territory of Arizona?” he had asked.

      No matter how many times he told the story, or where he told the story, or how drunk or sober his listeners were by that time, he always paused. He wasn’t an actor, but it came naturally, and the mustangers, soldiers, or Texas Rangers always fell silent. So quiet, one could hear a centipede crossing the sand over the crackling of the fire, or hear the breathing of the audience outside the barbershop, or hear the bartender cleaning a beer stein in some Purgatory City saloon with a damp bar towel. It always remained the same. The listeners would always hang on to every word.

      When McCulloch had finished, he would sip his beer, whiskey, coffee, or the water from a canteen. Although he knew the ending always led to a gasp from the collected breaths of his listeners, he returned his thoughts to the nightmare.

      * * *

      “What awaits you at the Dead River,” said the mystical warrior, “Is what awaits you. What awaits all men at some point on this long, winding road of life.

      “At the Dead River . . . you will find . . . death.”

      CHAPTER ONE

      A woman might say “This has to be the prettiest spot in Texas” about the Davis Mountains in West Texas. A man, on the other hand, could respond “What’s so damned pretty about Apaches hiding behind slabs of volcanic rock over your head and keeping you pinned down below with fire from a rifle they took off a dead cowboy whose horse give out at the wrong time? Or moving from canyon to canyon trying to find that herd of wild mustangs you’ve been chasing forever? Or getting baked by the sun because you’re five thousand to maybe eight thousand feet higher than you ought to be in Texas, then, five minutes later, freezing your butt off and getting peppered by sleet?”

      As he crouched by the campfire along Limpia Creek, sipping his last cup of coffee before starting his day, Matt McCulloch smiled. It was a pleasant memory, that conversation he recalled having with his wife shortly after they had married. She thought they should settle here, grab some land. There was good water—though you might have to dig pretty deep to find it—enough grass to feed cattle and horses, an army post for protection, and a thriving, friendly town, with churches, a good restaurant or two, and a schoolhouse so that their children, when they got around to having children, could get a good education. But McCulloch had figured he could get more land for his money farther west and south, so they had moved on with a farm wagon, a milk cow, the two horses pulling the wagon, the horse McCulloch rode, and the two broodmares tethered behind the Studebaker that carried all their belongings.

      Yeah, McCulloch thought as he stood and stretched. All their belongings. They’d had a lot of extra room in the back of that wagon to collect the dust as they traveled on, eventually settling near the town of Purgatory City . . . which wasn’t so pretty unless you found dust storms and brutality pleasant to the eyes . . . where churches met whenever a lay preacher felt the call . . . where the schoolhouse someone built quickly became a brothel . . . and where the best food to be found was the dish of peanuts served free to patrons at the Perdition Saloon.

      He tossed the last mouthful of the coffee onto the fire and moved to the black horse he had already saddled, stuffing the cup into one of the saddlebags. Found the well-used pot and dumped the last of the coffee, hearing the sizzle, letting the smoke bathe his face and maybe blind him to any bad memories, make him stop thinking about that dangerous question What if ?

      Would his wife and family still be alive had he settled here instead of over there? Would his daughter not have been kidnapped, never to be found again? Taken by the Apaches that had raided his ranch while he was off protecting the great state of Texas as one of the state’s Rangers?

      Besides, even Purgatory City wasn’t as lawless as it had once been, especially now that a certain contemptible newspaper was out of business and its editor-publisher-owner dead and butchered. Even the Perdition Saloon had been shuttered. After a couple of fires and a slew of murders, the owner had been called to rededicate his life after learning that he had come down with a virulent case of an indelicate disease and inoperable cancer on top of that. The Perdition Saloon was now—McCulloch had to laugh—a schoolhouse. The city still boasted five other saloons, and all did thriving business when the soldiers and cowboys got paid, although Texas Rangers and some dedicated lawmen generally kept a lid on things.

      He kicked rocks and dirt over the fire, spread out the charred timbers, and stuffed the pot into the other saddlebag.

      McCulloch was getting his life back together, had even begun to rebuild that old ranch of his. Not much, not yet anyway. Three corrals, a lean-to, and a one-room home dug into what passed for a hill. It was enough for him.

      The corrals were empty, but horses were what had brought Matt McCulloch to the Davis Mountains. Wild mustangs roamed all over these mountains, and he had decided it was a good time to get back into the horse-trading business. Find a good herd of mustangs, capture those mares, colts, fillies, and the boss of the whole shebang. Break a few, keep a few, and sell a bunch. It was a start, a new beginning. All he had to do was find a good herd worth