The Retired Gunslinger Returns (Preview)

Prologue

Fort Collins, Colorado

May 9, 1888

The scent of roasted pine wafted into George Barrett’s nostrils. He smiled, dreaming of his first camping trip with his father when he was ten years old. His pa was showing him how to roast possum. He hadn’t had possum in more than forty years. He missed those days.

The fire crackled and heat settled over him like a blanket. The warmth was comforting and soothing, like the feel of Barbara’s body pressed against his. He turned to his pa and said, “Pa? Did you love Ma as much as I love Barb?”

“Well, I don’t know, son,” Pa replied. “You never met your ma, and you won’t meet Barb for another fifteen years.”

George’s brow furrowed. “Fifteen…”

The fire crackled again, and the scent of charred pine filled his nostrils once more. His eyes widened. He wasn’t ten years old. He was fifty-eight, and he was in his home, not camping.

He woke instantly and leaped out of bed. It had been over twenty years since he’d last moved that fast, and Barbara woke with similar alarm. 

“George? What…” Her voice trailed off when she saw him staring in shock at the smoke wafting in from underneath the door. “Oh, God,” she whispered softly.

George’s first thought was an absurd shock at hearing his wife take the Lord’s name in vain. She never swore. Hell, any time an epithet left his mouth in her presence, he could be sure of her hand smacking him upside the head.

His second thought came when the door in front of him splintered from the heat, and he could see the yellow glow of the flame behind. Once more, he leaped into action, picking up the chair from its place in front of the room’s small pine table and throwing it through their window. 

He had just bought the glass panes for that window and the ones in the kitchen and main room of their cabin. Of course a fire would occur the next week.

Barbara shrieked and flinched back in shock.

“Come on, Barbara,” George said. “Time to go.”

She blinked, not yet over the shock. “What?”

“We need to go.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. He helped her through the window, holding her until she was steady on her feet on the other side. He climbed through after her, and they jogged away until he was certain they were safe.

“Oh, George,” Barbara cried, staring back at their house. “What will we do?”

George watched numbly as the home he had built with his own hands twenty-two years ago burned to cinders. They could run for help and try to put out the flames, but there was no point. The house was gone.

“Burns quick, don’t it.”

George spun around, reaching instinctively for the handgun he had left in his burning house. He was grateful for that when he saw the stranger who had spoken was accompanied by at least ten other riders.

The stranger was around George’s age, but while George was burly and barrel-chested, this stranger was thin and wiry. He watched the fire, his eyes shining, his mouth spread in a wide grin.

“Why?” Barbara asked. “Why did you do this to us?”

The stranger kept his eyes on the fire. “It’s your own fault. You two stuck your noses where they didn’t belong. Now you’ll pay the price.”

He drew his handgun. George’s last act was to throw himself in front of his wife in a futile attempt to protect her.

Chapter One

Bradshaw, Wyoming

June 13, 1888

The soft gray light of dawn filtered through the curtains of Calvin Davis’s bedroom window and caressed his cheek with the cool of the morning air. Calvin smiled and rolled out of bed, immediately awake. He always woke immediately since settling in Bradshaw.

“Another beautiful day,” he said.

His grin widened. There was a bounce in his step as he dressed and headed to the door. He pulled on his leather boots—the new ones he’d bought eight months ago—and set his Stetson—also new—on top of his head. His belt came last, and the fact that the gun inside the holster of that belt was used for nothing more serious than scaring coyotes pleased him immensely.

He walked toward the well, whistling brightly as the thrushes joined him in song. One of them hopped out from behind a thorn bush and cocked its head curiously. Calvin tipped his hat good morning, and the bird tipped its head the other way and watched him a moment longer before hopping back to its nest.

Chuckling, Calvin lifted his head to the horizon. The sun wouldn’t rise for another half-hour or so, but its light was already driving the stars dark. He had built the front door to face east and the back porch to face west so he could watch the sun rise and set every day.

Of course, he’d be watching the sun rise on horseback. Just because he was retired didn’t mean he didn’t have work to do.

“Yes, sir, the life of a ranching man,” he said to himself.

Boy howdy, that sounded good. A ranching man. Not a bounty hunter. Not a gunman. A rancher. A man who slept in a proper bed rather than a bedroll and ate proper meals at a proper table using proper bowls and silverware, not one who slurped beans out of a tin can cooked on an open fire. A man who drew his own water out of his own well and didn’t fill a canteen out of a stream.

He took the water back to the house, still grinning broadly. This was the life.

Back inside, he set the water to boil and made himself a quick breakfast of eggs and his last two strips of bacon. He would need to head into town to buy more. He loved beef as much as the next man, but even he got tired of it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day.

Besides, it would give him an excuse to see Nellie.

Heat climbed his cheeks and he shook his head. “Just like a schoolboy.”

Well, he was a long way away from thinking about settling down, and by the time he was ready, Nellie would almost certainly have been snatched up by one of the younger and more established men in town. That was all right. She was a good girl, and she deserved a good man. 

As for Calvin? His time would come, and so would his woman. He was in no rush.

That thought brought another grin to his face. He was in no rush. No one was running from him, and he wasn’t chasing anyone. He lived on his own time now, and the fact that he was up to greet the dawn was entirely his choice and not a deadline imposed on him by the U.S. Marshals.

Life was good.

After breakfast, he headed to the stable. He loved the stable almost as much as he loved the house. The only reason he loved the house more was that he’d built it entirely with his own two hands. The other buildings—the stable, the barn, the woodshed, the toolshed, and the grain silo—were built with help from neighboring ranchers.

That neighborliness had surprised Calvin. He wouldn’t have thought that competing ranches would have helped a newcomer establish himself, but everyone had been so welcoming.

It was a stretch, though, to say he was competing with anyone. At a hundred head strong, his ranch was doing well for being less than a year old, but the second smallest ranch in the area surrounding Bradshaw had several times that many cattle, and a few had between eight and fifteen thousand.

Still, finding friends as quickly as he had encouraged him.

A sliver of sun poked over the horizon, and the rest of the songbirds joined the thrushes in welcoming the morning. Calvin stopped in front of the stable and grinned out at his ranch. Today would be a light day. The cattle were already in the pasture, so all Calvin had to do was…

His smile faded when he looked at the pasture and saw it empty. His brow furrowed, and he stepped a few yards away from the stable. Where was the herd?

A kernel of alarm grew in his mind. Had he actually lost the cattle? Had they been stolen? Wandered off during the night? How did he not hear—

The low of a steer interrupted his thoughts. It was quickly followed by another, then another, then many more. Calvin felt heat climb his cheeks again and slowly turned to the right.

And there was the herd, all one hundred of them, happily waking in the wilderness just outside of his property. He turned back to the pasture and deduced the reason. An open gate, swinging lazily in the gentle morning breeze. He had forgotten to close it last night.

He sighed and shook his head ruefully. Well, he was still a novice at ranching. Anyone could have made that mistake, right?

“At least no one saw me,” he muttered under his breath.

He shrugged. Oh well. It would be a little bit busier of a day than he’d anticipated. That was all right. It was good, honest work, the kind of work that didn’t leave him wondering if his contract was the only thing that separated him from the men he caught or wondering when one of them would catch him before he got to them.

“Mornin’, Thunder,” he called. “Got us some herding to do.”

Thunderbolt, Calvin’s tough Mustang stallion, lifted his eyes to Calvin and whinnied irritably.

“Oh, quit your bellyachin’,” Calvin scolded. “You’re not that old.”

At fifteen, Thunderbolt was far from young, but he was strong, sturdy, and still swift despite his age. Calvin hoped to get fifteen more years from him before finally turning him to pasture. He’d known horses to work that long before if cared for properly.

Either way, he wasn’t nearly old enough to whine about herding a few cattle. Especially considering how docile these cattle were. At the advice of the more experienced ranchers, Calvin had purchased Galloway cattle for his stock. In addition to thick winter coats that allowed them to survive the harsh Wyoming winters, the breed was incredibly patient with anything that wasn’t trying to eat one of their calves.

He saddled Thunderbolt and led him outside. To his pleasant surprise, a few head had already started to wander back through the gate to graze. He grinned at Thunderbolt. 

“See that? They’re herding themselves. You’re grouching for no reason.” Thunderbolt snorted, and Calvin laughed and patted his neck. “Good boy.”

Other than his Smith & Wesson .44 and his Winchester repeater, Thunderbolt was all that remained of Calvin’s old life. Everything else—even the clothes on his back—was new. When he had left bounty hunting behind, he had made a clean break. It was silly, he knew, and a bit of a waste of the money he’d carefully saved over fourteen years of work, but he wanted to completely leave his old identity in the past.

He began to herd the cattle, or rather ride back and forth behind them to encourage them to herd themselves a little faster. They really were an easy breed to care for. As he rode, the sun rose higher and the weather warmed. It would be a hot one.

His smile faded as he recalled days on the trail with the boiling sun beating down on him. The Wyoming sun was far from punishing, but he had spent much of his time in the muggy heat of Texas, the dusty plains of Kansas, and the baked deserts of Arizona. He’d told himself he liked that life, craved the adventure and freedom of living on the open road. He’d even told himself he liked the work, chasing down criminals who’d fled justice and bringing them back to answer for their crimes.

The truth was that he’d hated every second of it. He’d hated shivering in the cold and boiling in the sun. He’d hated the ever-present dust that clung to him, the days between baths, the “meals” consisting of little more than scraps of dried beef and stale crusts of bread. He’d hated chasing armed men who would rather die than face justice—and would certainly rather kill.

Most of all, he’d hated looking over his shoulder every night, whether on the trail or as a guest in someone’s home or as a tenant in a boardinghouse. He’d hated wondering if Jack Thompson was going to find him before he found Jack and wondering if Jack would get the better of him in their final confrontation.

That was what had finally convinced him to leave bounty hunting. Prior to Jack, the criminals he hunted had mostly been thieves: rustlers, stage robbers, and bank robbers. Surprisingly few had been violent, and even though most of them had discovered an appreciation for violence when they learned Calvin was on their trail, they had rarely posed much of a threat. In most cases, he’d been able to subdue them without even injuring them. Well, without seriously injuring them, anyway.

A few criminals had been dangerous. Gunfighters who drifted throughout the West looking for people to kill. Some of them had an odd code of honor that insisted they only kill in specific ways—the “ten paces apart at sunset” kind of killers. Most just liked killing. These were more sobering threats to Calvin, but thanks to his experience and savvy, he was able to avoid harm.

But Jack was different. That man was crazy in the worst way a man could be. He was a killer, but he wasn’t just a killer. He was a thief, and as far as Calvin could tell, he was only a thief by necessity. His propensity to crime precluded gainful employment as an option, so he stole what he needed to survive.

What he really liked to do was burn things.

Calvin shivered, earning a quizzical stare from Thunderbolt. He smiled. “I’m all right, boy. Just a lingering chill from the night.”

Thunderbolt’s eyes made it clear he didn’t believe Calvin, but he turned his head away and left his rider to his own devices. Calvin sighed and walked the last of the cattle inside the fence, then dismounted and closed the gate. This time, he made sure to latch it.

“All right, boy. Let’s get back to the stable. You’re due for a brushing and a reshoeing. Then we’ll polish your tack.”

Thunderbolt shrugged, an endearingly human action, and allowed Calvin to ride him back to the stable.

As Calvin brushed Thunderbolt, he thought of his final encounter with Jack. This time, the target had been a school. In the past, Jack had committed his arson at night, which was what had allowed him to elude capture. This time, he’d set fire to the school during the day. 

It meant thirty children and four adults had nearly burned to death inside the building, but it also meant the fire was put out before the structure was destroyed and everyone was rescued. Perhaps most importantly, it meant Calvin was able to enlist the help of the city marshal and quickly form a posse to arrest Jack.

He would never forget the look in the man’s eye when Calvin finally caught him. There was no remorse. No fear. Not even anger. He’d grinned at Calvin and asked, “Did I roast any of ‘em?”

And when Calvin had replied, “No, they all got out,” he’d clucked his tongue and said, “Pity. Was hoping I got a few of ‘em.”

Calvin shivered again. The brush scraped across Thunderbolt’s skin, eliciting an annoyed snort from the horse.

“Sorry, boy,” Calvin said, pulling the brush away. “You’re all good. Go on outside and get some fresh air.”

Thunderbolt snorted again and walked from the stable. Calvin didn’t worry about him running around loose. Thunderbolt always returned well before nightfall, and he never wandered out of sight of the ranch. When Calvin needed him again, he would call, and Thunderbolt would come running.

He stood and stretched briefly before starting on the tack. A moment later, he realized he’d forgotten to reshoe Thunderbolt.

Well, that was okay. He could just drop the horse off with the farrier while he ate dinner at the Huckleberry Inn. His heart lifted as it always did when he thought of the Huckleberry Inn, or more specifically, the girl who worked there.

Nellie was easily the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. 

He’d never been much for staring at women. No woman wanted to marry a man whose job was to hunt killers and bandits. He would never be home, and eventually, he might never come home. When he’d needed a woman, he’d gone to the brothels and slaked his thirst for a night, but after a while, he hadn’t even done that. It was just… empty.

“One day,” he told himself. “Soon.”

He needed to get through this year. If he could handle the ranch through the summer buying season and keep the herd safe through the winter, then he would trust himself to be ready for a wife. He doubted Nellie would wait that long—if she even looked his way at all with so many better options—but if she didn’t, that was all right. There’d be another woman.

Not one like her.

“Well, some people have, and some people don’t,” he said. “No use complaining about it.”

The brief moment of longing had at least taken his thoughts off of Jack Thompson. He was able to finish the rest of his chores by mid-afternoon. That gave him just enough time to wash and call Thunderbolt back to be saddled so he could ride into town and get himself a proper dinner.

“And get you shod,” he said. “Can’t forget that. Thunderbolt, don’t let me forget that.”

Thunderbolt snorted, and Calvin smiled and patted his cheek.

The town was only a mile or so away from his house, so it wasn’t long before the wilderness gave way to the bustling streets of Bradshaw. When Calvin had arrived, the community was already large and successful, and now that the railroad was here, it was sprouting like a weed, spreading out south and east throughout the flatlands.

There were dozens of people on the street when Calvin arrived, and only a few of them bothered to give him a greeting. The “village” feel of a small Western town was rapidly giving way to the hurried excitement of a city. It would be a long time yet before Bradshaw was a proper city, but it had already turned the corner. It would never again be a small town.

Oh well, that was the way of things. Besides, big towns had people in place to deal with the problems that towns out West faced. Bradshaw didn’t have the same kind of trouble Calvin found in so many towns as a bounty hunter. No one shot each other in the streets here. No outlaw gangs rustled cattle or robbed banks here. 

The worst the sheriff and his deputies had to deal with were the occasional fights at the Red Hen saloon, and even those were never more than dustups or drunken brawls. Bradshaw might only be quiet by comparison to the bigger cities of the West, but it was safe. That mattered more than anything else.

His mind wandered so much that he nearly rode past the farrier. True to his word, Thunderbolt snorted and stamped to alert Calvin, who blinked and quickly pulled him to the side of the road.

The farrier was a burly, bearded man about a half-foot shorter than Calvin, but probably thirty pounds heavier. He carried most of that weight in his arms and shoulders, probably from wrestling horses all his life. 

When Calvin walked in, he grinned and said, in a thick growl of a voice, “Howdy, Calvin. Shoeing time again?”

“Just about,” Calvin replied with a grin. “How’ve you been, Hoss?”

He wasn’t sure what Hoss’s real name was. The man had apparently gone by Hoss for the past twenty-two years because he was “strong as a ‘hoss’.”

“Outstanding as always,” Hoss said. He took the reins from Calvin and patted Thunderbolt affectionately. “How’s Thunder today?”

Thunderbolt snorted politely, and Hoss laughed and clapped the horse on the withers. Thunderbolt sidestepped a little and looked at Calvin warily as though to ask if he was safe with this behemoth. 

Calvin grinned and patted Thunderbolt’s rump. “I’ll see you later, boy.”

Hoss turned his grin back to Calvin. “Gone to find yourself a honey?”

It was an old joke between them. Calvin played his part. “I’m not planning on it, but hey, you never know.”

Hoss laughed again. “Well, I hope you do. That ranch must get lonely without a woman to keep it warm.”

“It’s warm enough,” Calvin replied. “Beats sleeping on the trail.”

Hoss shook his head and turned to Thunderbolt. “What are we going to do about your dad, huh? He’ll drown himself in sorrow.”

With Hoss’s attention on Thunderbolt, Calvin took his leave. He grinned as he headed toward the Huckleberry Inn, the first and still the most popular boarding house in the town.

Hoss was one of several characters that made Bradshaw Calvin’s favorite town among the many he had visited. He often thought it was a good thing God had given the man such a sunny disposition. If he’d been born angry, it would have taken a full army division to stop him.

He walked into the Huckleberry Inn and came face to face with one of the other characters that made Bradshaw worth living in. Ruth Murray was one of those rare people who never seemed to realize they had gotten old. Her graying hair and creased forehead belonged on a woman in her sixties, but her sharp wit and boundless energy was that of a woman forty years younger.

She looked Calvin up and down when he entered. “You washed this time. Miracles do exist.”

He laughed and wrapped her in an embrace. “How are you, Ruth?”

“Well, if you don’t crush me to death, I’ll be doing just great,” she quipped.

She spoke with a faint trace of the Irish accent she was born with. She had moved to America when she was eleven and ten years later met the love of her life. Twenty years after that, she and Henry Murray had left Missouri and the ravages of the war behind and started a new life as some of the first settlers in Bradshaw. Henry had passed away two years ago, but Ruth remained as strong and fierce as ever.

Calvin released her and said, “I don’t suppose you have some dinner left you can sell to a poor rancher exhausted from a day of hard work?”

“If you had time to wash, you aren’t exhausted and that wasn’t hard work,” Ruth corrected. “But I’ll let you have some dinner anyway.” She smiled. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Good to see you, too.”

“Sit down,” she said. “I made your favorite.”

His eyes widened appreciatively. “I’m a lucky man.”

“Yes, you are. Now sit. I’ll send Nellie out with some whiskey in a moment.”

Calvin took a seat near the back of the dining room where he could look out at the bustling crowd. It wasn’t any larger than it had been when he lived here, but there were far more strangers than regulars now. Later in the evening, that would change as the new arrivals headed home and the long-term residents took advantage of the relative quiet to come out and meet with their friends, but for now, the room was full of new faces.

Ruth had given Calvin a place to stay for the first two months of his residency in Bradshaw. She had refused any form of payment despite Calvin’s insistence that he had the money, insisting he save it to get his ranch up and running. Only at the combined urging of Calvin and Nellie had she grudgingly accepted a token amount of back rent when Calvin was ready to move into his new home.

“Howdy there, cowboy.”

Nellie’s soft voice warmed Calvin more than sunshine ever could. He turned to her, hoping his smile wasn’t filled with too much longing. “Howdy there.”

Nellie smiled at him, the pink in her cheeks making her look so alive and even more beautiful. Her green eyes danced underneath the soft curls of her auburn hair. “It’s been a few days. Where have you been?”

“Fixing the fence,” he said. “The herd kept wandering off, so I shored up the pasture fence and added latches to the gates. Should be all good now.” As long as I remember to close those gates.

“Ah, I see.”

She leaned down to set the glass of whiskey in front of him, and he tried not to notice the smoothness of her skin or the curve of her hips. Unfortunately, the only other place to look was the swell of her breasts underneath the modest blue cotton dress, and that did absolutely nothing to calm his pounding heart.

He was almost grateful when she straightened and said, “I’ll be back to talk some more later, but we’re backed up right now. Dinner will be ready in ten minutes. In the meantime, try not to drink that too fast. I’d rather not have to send you home tied to the back of your horse.”

“When have I ever gotten drunk?” he asked in a slightly wounded tone.

“Just because I haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it’s never happened.”

She gave a saucy flip of her hair as she walked away, and Calvin once more tried not to watch her sway as she walked away to serve the other tables. Once more, he failed.

When he decided he had stared long enough to look like a creep, he turned away and sighed. “One day,” he whispered to himself.

Dinner was indeed Calvin’s favorite: pork roast with mashed turnips and baked beans. The odd combination had been Calvin’s first meal at the boardinghouse, concocted with leftovers from the previous two dinners. To Ruth’s amusement, Calvin had announced it was the greatest meal he’d ever eaten, so she’d made it a fixture on the menu ever since. To her further amusement and slight astonishment, it proved as popular with everyone else as it had with Calvin.

He nursed two more shots of whiskey after finishing his dinner. The crowd changed from newcomers to regulars, but it never died down. Nellie never did get a chance to come by and talk for more than a few seconds at a time.

Finally, Calvin decided he’d kept Hoss waiting long enough. He didn’t want the blacksmith to decide he’d found a girl and spread rumors about him to the rest of the town.

So, after giving Nellie an apologetic look, which she returned, and embracing Ruth, he left the Huckleberry Inn and promised himself that one day, he’d return to ask Nellie if he could court her properly.

One day.

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Abandoned with his sister as children, Claus has only known life the hard way. Years later, Claus tries to lead a peaceful life, until the day he finds his sister’s baby on his doorstep. The baby boy comes with a note to protect him as she is on the run from her former outlaw partner. Grappling with this unexpected responsibility, Claus takes young Samuel on a journey across the state to find his sister. Along the way, he meets Mattie, a young woman who has had her own share of troubles…

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