Stand Up and Die. William W. Johnstone

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      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.”