Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)
Jon Land
For Bob Gleason Editor, friend, and the smartest man I know
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Before we start, it’s time to give some much deserved shout-outs to those who make it possible for me to do what I do, as well as do it better.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but let’s start at the top with my publisher, Tom Doherty, and Forge’s associate publisher Linda Quinton, dear friends who publish books “the way they should be published,” to quote my late agent, the legendary Toni Mendez. The great Bob Gleason (see the dedication page), Karen Lovell, Elayne Becker, Phyllis Azar, Patty Garcia, Ryan Meese, my copyeditor Jessica Manzo, and especially Natalia Aponte are there for me at every turn. Natalia’s a brilliant editor and friend who never ceases to amaze me with her sensitivity and genius. Editing may be a lost art, but not here thanks to both Natalia and Bob Gleason, and I think you’ll enjoy all of my books, including this one, much more as a result.
My friend Mike Blakely, a terrific writer and musician, taught me Texas first-hand and helped me think like a native of that great state. And Larry Thompson, a terrific writer in his own right, has joined the team as well to make sure I do justice to his home state along now with his son-in-law, a state trooper who would make a great Texas Ranger himself, who suggested the Balcones Canyonlands as the setting for my fictional Indian reservation in these pages. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Jack Briggs, the real “Steeldust Jack,” for letting me borrow his nickname.
Check back at www.jonlandbooks.com for updates or to drop me a line, and please follow me on Twitter @jondland. I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank all of you who’ve already written, Tweeted, or e-mailed me your thoughts on any or all of the first seven tales in the Caitlin Strong series. And if this happens to be your first visit to the world of Caitlin, welcome and get ready for a wild ride that begins as soon as you turn the page.
P.S. For those interested in more information about the history of the Texas Rangers, I recommend The Texas Rangers and Time of the Rangers, a pair of superb books by Mike Cox, also published by Forge.
No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.
—MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
PROLOGUE
The framers of [the Ordinance Establishing a Provisional Government] clearly envisioned the Rangers as an irregular force, distinct from traditional military units or volunteer citizen soldiers. The corps would consist of three or more companies of fifty-six men each, rangers serving one-year enlistments. Rangers would furnish their own horse and tack, weapons, and powder and shot for one hundred rounds. Each company would be headed by a captain, backed up by a first and second lieutenant. The captains reported to a major. The major answered to the commander in chief of the regular army.
—Mike Cox, The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso 1821–1900 (New York: Forge, 2008)
1
BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS; 1874
“What ’xactly you make of this, Ranger?”
Texas Ranger Steeldust Jack Strong looked up from the body he was crouched alongside of—or what was left of it. “Well, he’s dead all right.”
The male victim’s suit coat had been shredded, much of the skin beneath it hanging off the bone. He’d worn his holster low on his hip, gunfighter style, and his pearl-handled Samuel Walker Colt was the latest model, updated from the one Jack Strong had used since joining the Texas Rangers after the Civil War.
Steeldust Jack checked what was left of the man’s shirt for a darker patch where a badge, removed after he’d been killed, would have blocked out the sun, but he found none. So this was no Texas lawman, for sure, but a gunman of some sort all the same, who’d managed to get himself torn apart just outside a stretch of land set aside for the Comanche Indian reservation a half day’s ride out of Austin.
Steeldust Jack rose awkwardly on his gimpy leg until he was eye to eye with Abner Denbow, the county sheriff who’d sent a rider to the state capital to bring back a Texas Ranger from the company headquartered there.
“Fought plenty of Indians myself over the years,” Denbow told him. “I believe that makes me the wrong man to venture onto that land the government gave them for no good call I could see.”
“It was Sam Houston who gave this patch to the Comanche originally,” Steeldust Jack reminded.