Last Car For This Time

By Dean Wesley Smith

When men start getting run over by slow-moving train cars in a gold rush town in the mountains of Idaho, Marshal Duster Kendal must solve the murders. But there might not be a motive besides the fact that Duster Kendal lives. Duster knows exactly what to do about that. And he needs to do it fast before things get much, much worse.

Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than ninety popular novels and well over 100 published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom. He writes under many pen names and has also ghosted for a number of top bestselling writers.

Dean has also written books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and has done scripts for Hollywood. One movie was actually made.

Over his career he has also been an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books.

Currently, he is writing thrillers and mystery novels under another name.

If you liked Last Car For This Time, you might also like the following short stories:

I Killed the Clockwork Key
Cutting Down Fred
Dried Up: A Poker Boy story
Clicking Sticks
Dinner on a Flying Saucer
In the Shade of the Slowboat Man
The Ghost of the Garden Lounge
Jukebox Gifts

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jun 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458192004

Dean Wesley Smith

Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA TODAY bestselling writer, Dean Wesley Smith published far over a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. He currently produces novels in four major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the old west, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, and the superhero series staring Poker Boy. During his career he also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds.

Book preview

Last Car for this Time

A Duster Kendal Story

Dean Wesley Smith

Last Car for this Time

Copyright © 2012 by Dean Wesley Smith

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover Design copyright © 2012 WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright © Mirek Hejnicki/Dreamstime

Smashwords Edition

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Last Car for this Time

A Duster Kendal Story

Chapter One

Marshal Duster Kendal really had no great desire to see the death scene. He stepped off the wooden porch of the Dewey Hotel and moved his six-foot frame as slow as he could down the dry dirt of the Main Street of the tiny town of Dewey, Idaho. With each step his boots kicked up a small cloud into the hot, morning air.

Lately he’d seen far too many deaths and he had a hunch this one wouldn’t look much different than the other two he’d seen here and others he’d seen over the last year.

Things seemed to be unraveling. He knew the signs.

This time he had met the dead guy two nights before in the Benson Saloon in Silver City. It was one thing to see a body of a stranger. Another to look on the dead face of a man Duster had watched poor drinks for two hours.

The morning sun beat down through the clear August sky with such force, Duster could almost feel it like a weight on his shoulders, pressing him down into