Bloodrun! (A Peacemaker Western #5)

By William S. Brady

The stagecoach was a lifeline. It linked Garrison with the other Texas border towns. It brought new blood and new money. And raiders! Their trade was death, paid in blood and bullets. John T. McLain was Garrison's duly elected marshal. It was his duty to see the stage got through ... no matter who stood in the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Jun 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215679975

William S. Brady

The name of William S (Stuart) Brady was used by writers Angus Wells and John Harvey for the series of Westerns featuring gunfighter Jared Hawk. The series (HAWK) ran from 1979 to 1983 with 15 books. The PEACEMAKER series featured ex-Civil War veteran John T. McLain, widowed and alone he seeks a new life in the aftermath of war that has torn his country apart.

Book preview

Prologue

THE PLACE WAS larger now and still growing.

Like a tree planted and tended against the heat of the Texas summers, against the cool of the winters, it was spreading, setting its roots firm in the ground. The outlines of the old Spanish Mission were lost beneath the steady spread of buildings, the ancient adobe nurturing the more recent growth that formed a configuration inevitably called Main Street. It wasn’t much of a street, not yet, but it was there, an undeniable statement that this was a town, not one more blow-away settlement. There was a sign on the trail leading in with the single word Garrison branded into the wood deep enough that the wind off the Texas Gulf wouldn’t scour it clean. That was a statement, too. Beyond the sign the trail was overlooked by a watchtower, which marked the beginnings of the Army fortifications: earthworks and timber walls surrounding hutments of wood and abode, a small parade ground, a flagpole.

The town itself was somehow separate, even though the trail continued through the fortifications to become Main Street, where the civilian buildings began. The saloon was larger, rooms built on and a corral behind. Attached to it was a store, the sign proclaiming it as the domain of Abraham Kintyre—Purveyor of the Finest delineated in the same lettering that announced the earlier structure as the Garrison Saloon. There was a barber shop which also served as a dentist’s and a funeral parlor; a smithy; a livery stable. Marking the dividing line between military and civilian was a newer building without a name, just the red lantern hung outside indicating its purpose.

There was a fixed population—Alice and Shawn Docherty ran the saloon, Abraham Kintyre the store. The barber shop was owned by Angus MacKay, the livery by One-Eye Peters, the smithy by Swede—he had a name, but it was unpronounceable—and the place with the red light by a Mexican known only as Gomez. These people, lived where they worked, their places of business growing with the commerce of the mounting cattle trade and the steady influx of homesteaders. As yet, individual houses were sparse, the most notable the neat wood frame built for Janey Page, who was seamstress and the nearest thing the place had to a schoolmarm.

The Army side was the province of Captain Frank Donnelly, officer in command of the forty men stationed in the Rio Verde valley against the threat of the Nokoni Comanche, whose hunting grounds the valley had once been.

There was a new building going up now. A small, solid structure of adobe and timber, flat-roofed, with bars on the windows: a jailhouse. There was a sign waiting to get hung from the porch that read: Jail. Marshal—John T. McLain.

That, too, was proof positive that Garrison was here to stay. McLain knew it, and liked the idea.

He had come down to this lush river valley bordered by the hills of the Eagle Range and the distant Jornados in the aftermath of the Civil War. Then, it had been no more than an Army outpost with a saloon-cum-trading post. And McLain had been no more than a drifter, one more veteran of the Missouri guerrilla fighting. He had lost his home and his wife, cauterized his rage riding alongside Bloody Bill Anderson and Butcher Harvey and Josey Wales. It had been Josey Wales who told him: Go to Texas. And he had gone, with nothing more than the shirt on his back, his horse, and his guns. The Sharps buffalo gun and the brace of Colt’s Dragoons had won him a respect he had not sought and a new home. Those, plus his natural integrity.

And now he lived somewhere again. A growing place. A place with roots. A good place.

He was The Marshal.

Chapter One

THE SUN SHONE bright on McLain’s new badge.

It glittered off the five-pointed star as he watched Swede hammer the bars of the jailhouse into place, embarrassing him for no reason he could clearly define. He had accepted the appointment under the urging of Alice and Shawn and Janey, but as yet he was not accustomed to holding a position of authority and the idea that he represented Law in Garrison was a thing he had to come to terms with. That he could handle the job, he did not doubt: he was not a doubting kind of man. It was the idea that the star would make a difference to his position in the community that worried him. Until now he had been a scout and a mule skinner, bouncer when the saloon owned by Alice and Shawn Docherty needed a bouncer. He had eked out a living and been content, but now he was official, and that set a frown on his ruggedly handsome face.

He combed fingers through his long brown hair and hefted a fresh set of bars into place, waiting for Swede to angle them right and set them into the adobe of the window ledges.

The big blond Scandinavian grinned as he put the finishing touches to the final set, wiping his hands down his workpants as he turned to McLain.

‘For a man with a new office, John, you look worried.’

His voice was a lilting burr, melodic with the accents of his homeland. The big Missouri man shrugged in reply and stepped on to the porch, pushing open the door.

‘Wondering how folks’ll take it,’ he said. ‘Me bein’ the marshal now.’

‘Like they always have.’ Swede joined him on the porch. ‘The only difference is, you wear a badge. You’re legal.’

McLain nodded. It was the argument they had used to persuade him, and he had to admit that since coming to the Rio Verde he had been the nearest thing Garrison had to a Peace Officer. Frank Donnelly had been—until now—nominally in charge of law and order, but Frank’s authority came from the military, and as Alice and Janey had pointed out to him, Garrison—the town—was a civilian settlement. And if it was to be a genuine civilian settlement, then it needed a genuine civilian marshal. And there wasn’t anyone else who could handle the job. He had the respect of the townsfolk, and at six feet plus a little, he had the physical authority to handle it right.

There was another reason. A personal reason he was almost ashamed to admit, even to himself: he didn’t like Frank Donnelly. The Army man was a by-the-book officer with more regard for the regulations detailed in the military manuals than for what McLain saw as plain commonsense. Donnelly’s stiffback attitude had once taken him straight into the jaws of a Comanche ambush that had very nearly wiped Garrison off the map before it even got started. McLain had pulled him out of that, and Donnelly had never forgiven him. Instead of thanking him for saving the tattered remnants of his command, Donnelly blamed him for the unusually lengthy tenure of his captaincy. The way Frank saw it, he would have been a major by now if the goddamned Johnny Reb hadn’t butted in. Now, however, McLain’s new badge gave him equal status with the captain, and that was another reason for accepting.

So was the fair-haired woman coming down Main Street with the kind of smile on her pretty face that gave a tug to a man’s heart.

Janey Page was a widow. The Nokoni had killed her husband and she had chosen to settle in Garrison. She was the best-looking female in two weeks’ ride. Donnelly and McLain were the only eligible men this side of Randall French’s French Seven spread, and Janey’s presence had intensified the rivalry between them. On McLain’s part it was unsought. He hadn’t really looked at another woman since his wife had been killed in the War, and to a slow—talking Missouri man Janey’s Eastern education was both admirable and more than a little off-putting. At first, she had made McLain nervous. A big old farm boy who saw things straight, without the fancy frills Eastern sophistication lent Janey, he had felt clumsy around her. It had been only gradually that he had come to accept her friendship and found something more beneath that. Just what it was, he wasn’t sure yet, but he wasn’t about to concede any points to Frank Donnelly either.

He smiled back at her.

‘John,’ she smiled. ‘Swede.’

‘Come on in.’ McLain held the door for her. ‘Don’t reckon you’ll see the inside of many jails.’

‘I hope not.’ She went on smiling as she stepped past him. ‘Will you live here?’

McLain gestured around the small office, shaking his head. There was a plank floor raised a foot or so off the ground on cross-timbers set deep into the adobe. Two barred windows either side of the door with heavy shutters that bolted into, place. A pot-belly stove stood in one comer, flanked by a desk and a single chair. Half-way across, the room was divided by a row of floor-to-ceiling bars with two locking doors that opened the cells. Each cell had a window—also barred—and a bunk. There was the smell of fresh-cut timber and drying plaster; it was too early in the year for the stove to be lit.

‘It ain’t exactly home,’ he grinned. ‘I guess I’ll sleep over to the saloon.’

‘It’s ...’ Janey glanced round, touching the smooth metal of the dividing cage. ‘Well, businesslike.’

‘That is what it’s meant for.’ Swede nodded solemnly. ‘Business. Lawman’s business.’

‘I hope there won’t be too much.’ Janey ran a finger over the desk as though checking for dust.

McLain shrugged. ‘The town’s growin’, Janey. The whole territory’s gettin’ filled up, an’ that means we’ll get our share of trouble like anyplace else.’

‘Yes.’ She looked at his badge, then up at his face, and for a moment the smile clouded. ‘Be careful, John.’

The big man grinned, feeling a tinge of embarrassment at her concern, and at the same time pleasure that she should show it.

‘I’m always careful,’ he murmured.

‘Sometimes too careful.’ Swede’s muttered comment brought a flush to the woman’s face as he looked at her. McLain shuffled his feet and hooked his thumbs