Shootout With Death

By Jonathan Dunsky

The prisoner in Sheriff Cook's jail has a warning.

Something is coming to the town of Roseshade. Something evil and ancient and deadly.

But there is something more, too. There is something mysterious about this prisoner, something in his eyes that suggests a man older than he seems.

And the prisoner knows things about Sheriff Glen Cook that no other man should know.

And then there's the gun. Sheriff Cook took a gun off the prison that should not exist. A gun that feels and looks unreal.

With the prisoner's warning, Sheriff Cook is left to wonder if he and his prisoner can survive the night. Or will the dawn find them in Death's embrace?
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lion Cub Publishing
• Release date: Sep 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9789657795408

Book preview

Shootout With Death

SHOOTOUT WITH DEATH

JONATHAN DUNSKY

CONTENTS

Shootout With Death

Afterword

About the Author

SHOOTOUT WITH DEATH

The man had a thick wad of paper money in his pocket and a small pouch full of double eagle twenty-dollar gold coins. It made no sense for him to steal a horse. Yet here he was, in my holding cell, having been brought there at the point of a Burnside carbine by Stan O'Leary, whose irritable bladder had roused him in the dead of night just in time to catch the man as he was saddling up O'Leary's raggedy-ass horse.

The man sat on a shabby cot at the end of the cell, leaning back against the chipped brick wall, and gazing at O'Leary and me with the clearest blue eyes I had ever seen on a man.

They're going to string you up, you stinking horse thief, O'Leary said, sneering at him.

I didn't bother telling O'Leary that if anyone was stinking up my holding area, it was him. A particularly noxious blend of manure, sweat-drenched clothes, and cheap booze wafted from him. If cleanliness was indeed next to godliness, Stan O'Leary was so far removed from God that the Good Lord would have had to squint to see him.

The man looked at O'Leary, gave him a wink, and shrugged. If it was an act, it was a good one. God help me, he looked like he didn't care a whit that what O'Leary had said was true. The man had tried to steal a horse. Granted, it was an old horse and wasn't worth much, but still, in these parts a horse thief had but one future to look forward to—a quick drop at the end of a knotted rope.

O'Leary turned red.

Who you winking at? he yelled at the man, bringing his face up to the bars. He coughed up some phlegm and spat. The man didn't flinch. He didn't need to—O'Leary's greenish spit landed well short of the man's scuffed leather boots.

I pulled O'Leary away from the bars, glad that I had the sense to have him leave his rifle in the front hall. That's enough, Stan.

What are you picking his side for?

Up close, O'Leary smelled even worse, like he had peed into a bucket of whiskey, left it out in the sun to marinate, and then swished it around his mouth some.

No one's picking sides. Can't have you spitting around my holding cell, though. I'm the one who has to clean it up.

Don't like the way he winked at me. First he steals my horse, and now he's playing games. O'Leary gave the man a baleful glare.

What you mind him for? He's in there and you're out here, aren't you?

I clapped O'Leary on the shoulder and gently ushered him to the front hall of the building that served as the sheriff's office, holding cell, and my home. I was tired, not just from having been rousted out of bed in the middle of the night, but also of having to deal with Stan O'Leary.

The front hall was murky, the only light a single lantern that stood on the rough oak desk. Next to the