On the American frontier, every gun tells a story. From the greatest western writers of the 21st century, the story of the Winchester 1887. It’s a repeater. It’s a shotgun. A boy with a borrowed badge. An Indian lawman with a new kind of firearm. And an outlaw gang that wants these pilgrims dead.
With over 35 million books in print, William W. Johnstone is among of the bestselling western writers…
Excerpt: TERROR OF THE MOUNTAIN MAN by William & J.A. Johnstone
TERROR OF THE MOUNTAIN MAN by William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone
Chapter One
Southwest, Missouri—1882
“We’re getting pretty close now,” Smoke said. Smoke and Sally had been two days on the train since leaving Sugarloaf Ranch at Big Rock, Colorado, and he was sitting in the window seat, looking out.
“Do you see anything you recognize?” Sally asked.
“Yeah,” Smoke replied. “I have been right here, on this creek, before.”
“I’m sure,” Smoke said, as he recalled the last time he had been at this same spot.
Smoke could feel his stomach shaking from the shock waves of the explosion. The underpinnings of the trestle were carried away by the planted charges, but the superstructure remained intact for several more seconds, stretching across the creek with no visible means of support, as if defying the laws of gravity. Then, slowly, the tracks began to sag and the ties started snapping, popping with a series of loud reports, like pistol shots, until finally, with a resounding crash and a splash of water, the whole bridge collapsed into the creek.
“Now, that’s the way to do it, boys,” Asa Briggs said with a broad, happy smile. “The Yankees won’t be movin’ troops over this railroad for a while.”
It was just over twenty years ago when that trestle had been destroyed, one of the casualties of war. However, as the train passed over the creek on a rebuilt trestle, Smoke could remember the event as if it had been yesterday.
Smoke was in Missouri for the first time since he and his father had left back in 1865. He and his father had left together, and now they were returning together. Smoke had exhumed his father’s grave, and Emmett Jensen’s remains were in a beautiful ebony and silver coffin in the baggage car ahead. Smoke was bringing him home, to Missouri, to be buried next to his mother.
“It’s just something I want to do,” he had told Sally when he came up with the idea.
“Then we shall do it.”
“We?”
“Yes, we. I want to see where you were born, Smoke, and where you grew up.”
“I didn’t grow up there that much. I left home when I was still no more than a boy.”
Sally chuckled, and ran her hand through his hair. “What makes you think you’re grown up now?” she asked.
“Why would I want to grow up?” Smoke teased. “The only thing that happens when you grow up is you get old.”
The conductor came through the car then and stopping at the seat occupied by Smoke and Sally, leaned over to speak quietly.
“There is a table available in the dining car now, Mr. Jensen. I’ve asked them to hold it for you.”
“Thank you,” Smoke said, and he and Sally got up to walk back to the diner. They were met by a smiling porter, who escorted them to a table which was covered with white linen cloth and decorated by a vase of flowers. The menu displayed fare as varied as that found in the finest restaurants in the country. Darkness fell outside, a single candle lighting the distance between the couple.
Sally reached across the table to lay her hand on Smoke’s hand.
“I’m glad you’ve decided to do this,” she said. “I know that you have spoken about how you had to bury your mother.”
“In a feeding trough,” Smoke said in shame and embarrassment. “I had to bury her in a feeding trough. But she’ll have a fine coffin now. I should have done this long ago, Sally. I should have moved Pa back to Missouri and put them down next to each other, years ago.”
“It’s never too late,” Sally said.
“I guess not,” Smoke said. “It isn’t as if they are aware that they had to wait so long.”
After dinner they returned to the car, now brightly lit by the gimbal-mounted lamps between the windows.
Sally began reading, while Smoke sat in musing silence, the darkness outside limiting his view to that of the golden squares of light which, projected through the windows, were sliding by at almost thirty miles an hour along the gravel ballast beside the tracks.
Suddenly the train braked sharply, eventually grounding to a shuddering, screeching, banging halt. Curious as to why the train stopped so suddenly, Smoke looked out the window to see what he could determine. Because of the dark, he saw nothing.
“What is going on? Why have we stopped?” someone asked.
“I nearly broke my neck! The railroad is certainly going to hear from me!” another complained.
“Smoke, what is it?”
“I don’t know,” Smoke said. “Could be a break in the track. Could even be a train robbery.”
“Surely not?”
“Why not? We’re in Missouri, after all. And this is where Jesse James sort of perfected the operation.”
“But Jesse James is dead.”
“So I’ve heard,” Smoke said. He pulled his pistol from his holster, then let it rest on his knee, covered by his hat.
No sooner had Smoke done that than a man burst into the car from the front. He wore a bandana tied across the bottom half of his face, and he held a pistol which he pointed toward the passengers on the car.
“Everyone stay in their seats!” the armed man shouted.
“Smoke!” Sally said.
“Ever’body get their money out. We’re goin’ to have us a collection, you know, like what happens in a church?” The gunman laughed. “You just do what I tell you to do, and there won’t nobody get hurt,” the gunman shouted.
“Except you,” Smoke replied.
“What did you say?”
“You will be hurt, if you don’t step off this train now, and go on your way,” Smoke said calmly.
“Mister, are you crazy? You do see that I’m holdin’ a gun here, don’t you?”
“In fact, I do see it,” Smoke said. “But it isn’t going to do you any good. Now put the gun away and leave the train.”
“Yeah? An’ if I don’t?”
“I’ll kill you,” Smoke said.
“Abner, I think maybe you’d better get in here,” the gunman called.
Another gunman stepped in, to join the first.
“What do you need?” he asked. “What’s going on?”
“You see that feller down there, about halfway on the right?” The gunman chuckled. “He just told me that if I don’t get off the train now, he’s goin’ to kill me.”
Smoke continued to sit quietly in his seat, fixing an unblinking stare on the two men who were standing at the front of the car.
“Is that right, mister? Is that what you said?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Lady, maybe you’d better find somewhere else in this car to sit,” Abner said to Sally.
“Why?” Sally asked.
“Why? ’Cause we’re about to shoot that fella you’resittin’ beside, ’n’ it would be a downright shame if you was to get hit when we start shootin’.”
“He’s my husband, and I have no intention of moving. Besides, you won’t be shooting.”
“We’re not foolin’, lady. Do you think we won’t shoot?”
“Oh, I think you’ll make the attempt, but your effort will be unsuccessful.” Sally’s cool, and unflappable comments, spoken without the slightest indication of fear, or even anxiousness, shocked the other passengers in the car, and had a very unnerving effect on the two men.
“What the hell, let’s just shoot both of them,” Abner said. He and the other gunman, who had been addressed as James, both raised their guns to fire, pulling the hammers back as they did so.
Two shots rang out, but the shots didn’t come from the train robbers’ guns. Instead they came from Smoke, who had lifted his pistol from his lap and fired twice before either of the outlaws could get even one shot off.
During the gunfire, women screamed and men shouted. As the car filled with the gun smoke of the two discharges, Smoke jumped up and ran out through the back door of the car. Leaping from the steps down to the ground, he fell and rolled away from the train, out into the darkness.
“Abner! James! What’s goin’ on in there?” someone called. “What’s all the shootin’?”
In the dim light that spilled through the car windows, Smoke saw the gunman who was yelling at the others. As he ran through the little golden patches of light cast by the windows of the cars, it had the effect of a lantern blinking on and off so that first he was in shadow, then brightly illuminated . . . then shadow . . . then illuminated. Smoke waited.
“Hold it right there!” Smoke shouted. “I’ve got you covered. Put down your gun and throw up your hands.”
“The hell you do,” the gunman shouted. Realizing that he was illuminated by light shining from the train car, he moved out into the shadow to fire at Smoke, or at least, where he thought Smoke might be.
Smoke used the flame pattern to return fire. He heard the gunman let out a little yell, and he knew he had hit him. He got up, then ran quickly through the dark toward him, his gun at the ready.
His caution wasn’t necessary. The man was lying on the ground, dead.
The immediate danger seemed to be over, and as far as he knew, the three men he shot had been the only ones involved.
After another moment the conductor left the train and was soon joined by a few of the braver passengers. By now even the engineer, fireman, and the messenger had come down and the train crew and passengers stood around the body that lay belly-down alongside the train.
“There are two more dead inside, besides this one out here. Any others that you know of?” the conductor asked the engineer.
“No,” the engineer replied. “They was only three of ’em what stopped me, ’n’ if you say they’s two more of ’em inside, well, that would be all of ’em.”
“Did they get anything?” one of the passengers asked the messenger, who had come down from the express car.
“No, they didn’t get that far. The shooting started before I opened the door, and the next thing you know, they were gone.”
“Who was it that done all the shootin’?” the engineer asked.
“It was him,” one of the passengers said accusingly, pointing at Smoke. “And, if you ask me, it was damn foolish of him to do it too. They was women and children in that car, ’n’ with all the bullets flyin’ around, why it’s a wonder there wasn’t some of ’em hit.”
“There were only two bullets,” Smoke said. “And they weren’t flying around. They hit exactly what they were supposed to hit.”
“Why did you start shooting?” the conductor asked.
“Because they were about to shoot me,” Smoke answered.
“So you say. I’m not so sure about that,” the conductor said.
“Well, I’m sure, because I saw it,” one of the other passengers said. “The two brigands in the car pointed their pistols at this gentleman, and announced quite clearly for all concerned, that it was their intention to shoot not only him, but his wife as well.”
“Judge Clayborne. Were you in the car where the shooting took place?” one of the other passengers asked.
“I was.”
“What the hell, Eugene,” the messenger said to the conductor. “As far as I’m concerned, this man may have saved a few lives, besides which, the robbers didn’t get one penny of money. Mister,” he said looking directly at Smoke, “I, for one, thank you.”
Smoke nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“Why’d you stop, Lyman?” the conductor asked. “None of this would’ve happened if you hadn’t stopped.”
“Didn’t have no choice,” the engineer replied.
“They put a barricade across the tracks.” Lyman glanced toward a couple of the stronger-looking passengers.
“Fact is, we can’t move from this very spot till the track has been cleared. You two men want to bear a hand in gettin’ the barricade moved?”
“Sure thing,” one of the two answered, and both passengers went to the front of the train with the engineer and fireman, to begin clearing the cut timber from the track.
When Smoke returned to the train car the response toward him was measured.
“What a strange reaction these people are having,” Sally said. “Don’t they know you just saved their lives?”
“I wouldn’t take it that far,” Smoke said. “Besides, I fear that most of them think I endangered their lives by doing what I did.”
“Nonsense,” Sally said. “I’ll soon set them straight on that.”
Smoke reached out to put his hand on Sally’s arm. “I’d rather you not do that,” he said. “I would like for my return to Missouri to be as quiet as possible.”
Despite the situation, Sally laughed out loud. When she did so, several others in the car stared at her accusingly.
“As quiet as possible,” she said. “You just stopped a robbery in progress by shooting three of the robbers. Don’t you think it’s a little late to ‘enter Missouri quietly’?”
Smoke chuckled as well. “If you put it like that, I suppose you are right.”
“If I put it like that? How else am I going to put it?”
It took less than fifteen minutes to get the track cleared, then, with a series of jolts that eventually smoothed out, the train started up again.
About half an hour later the train began to slow, and Smoke pulled the curtain open to look outside. He saw a small house slide by, a dim, golden glow shining through the windows.
When the train came to a complete stop, Smoke and Sally stepped out onto the brick platform at the Galena Depot and looked around.
Behind them the train was temporarily at rest from its long run, but it wasn’t quiet. Because the engineer kept the steam up, the valve continued to open and close in great, heaving sighs. Overheated wheel bearings and gearboxes popped and snapped as its tortured metal cooled. On the platform all around him, there was a discordant chorus of squeals, laughter, shouts, and animated conversation as people were getting on and off the train.
When Smoke looked toward the rear of the train he saw that the three bodies had been taken down from the last car and were being laid out side by side at the far end of the platform. Already the curious were beginning to gather around them.
Smoke had brought his and Sally’s horses all the way from Big Rock, and he and Sally walked toward the attached stock car, away from those who were congregated around the men he had shot. They waited there as the horses were led down the board incline that had been lifted to the door of the car for that express purpose. The horses recognized them, and nodded and whickered in appreciation and relief that they had been reunited.
“Good-looking animals,” one of the employees said.
“Thanks. Is Grant’s stable still open?”
“Grant? Where you been, mister? Emil Grant died ten years ago. It ain’t Grant’s no more. It was bought out by Dave Kern.”
“Davey Kern?” Smoke smiled. He remembered Kern from when they were in school together. “Well, that’ll be just fine. I’ll be glad to leave my horses with him. Will there be someone there now?”
“I expect there will be. He keeps someone on duty there all night long.”
“Is the stable still in the same place, up on the corner of Maple and Fourth?”
“Still there.” The depot man looked at Smoke more closely. “You from here, mister? ’Cause if you are, I don’t recollect you.”
“You wouldn’t likely,” Smoke said. “I was just a boy when I left and that was a long time ago.”
As they were speaking, Smoke saw his father’s coffin being removed from the baggage car and placed, carefully, on one of the iron-wheeled carts.
He handed the reins of his horse to Sally and walked over to it.
“This belong to you?” the baggage master asked as Smoke approached.
“Yes.”
“It isn’t empty, is it?”
“No, it contains the remains of my father. I’ve brought him here to be buried.”
“What do you want done with it for now?”
“Can you keep it here, until I can make arrangements for it?”
“I reckon I can, but it’ll cost you a quarter a night for me to put it up here.”
Smoke gave him a dollar. “I should have all the arrangements made by the time this is worked off.”
The baggage master took the money, nodded, then motioned for one of the other men to move it into the depot baggage-storage area.
A FRONTIER CHRISTMAS by William W. Johnstone & J. A. Johnstone
CHAPTER ONE
Greeley, Colorado
Ralph Walters stood on the depot platform, waiting for the train. He had a long trip in front of him—to Cheyenne by rail, then by stagecoach up to Rawhide Buttes, Wyoming. He was a traveling troubadour, someone who could play the guitar, banjo, fiddle, harmonica, and drum. In one of his acts, he would pass himself off as a one-man band, and play the banjo, harmonica, and drum all at the same time. He was also a skilled magician. Because entertainment was rare and much appreciated, especially in the small towns, he did a good business.
“Here she comes!” somebody shouted, and several people moved closer to the track.
Walters remained in place as the big engine came roaring into the station with steam gushing from the drive cylinders and glowing coals dripping from the firebox.
The engineer was leaning on the windowsill of the cab, his jutting chin and hooked nose looking as if they were about to join. Brakes were applied, and the train came to a halt. It sat there with wisps of steam wreathing the drive wheels, the journals and gearboxes popping and snapping as they cooled.
“Board!” the conductor shouted.
Those who were about to make the trip rushed to climb onto the train.
This was old hat to Walters, who had made hundreds of trips on trains as he went from town to town.
The conductor recognized him, and smiled. “Hello, Mr. Walters, riding with us again, I see.”
“Yes, but only as far as Cheyenne. There I must take a coach.”
“Welcome aboard. I see that your regular seat hasn’t been taken.”
“Good, thank you.” Walters moved down the aisle to the last seat on the left.
With a series of starts and jerks, the train resumed its journey a moment later.
Walters leaned his head back against the seat. He believed he might also be getting a fever.
Sugarloaf Ranch, Colorado
When Smoke Jensen came back from town he had a letter from his friend Duff MacCallister. “Sally, I heard from Duff.” Smoke reached for a hot bear claw.
“Don’t eat more than one. I’m doing this for the boys in the bunkhouse. What does Duff have to say?”
“I don’t know I haven’t opened it yet. I thought we would read it together.”
Sally smiled. “That was nice of you.” She put another tray of dough puffs into the oven.
“How many of those things are you making?”
“We have eight hands spending the entire winter with us, and you know very well that Cal and Pearlie could eat this entire tray by themselves.”
Smoke chuckled. “I guess you’re right.” He opened the envelope and began to read, silently.
“Well, what does he say?”
“He has invited us to come to Chugwater to spend Christmas with him.”
“Christmas in Chugwater? That’s very nice of him. I wonder why he invited us, though. You would think he would have invited someone like Falcon, or one of the other MacCallisters.”
Smoke nodded in agreement. “But he not only invited us, he invited Matt, too, since he’s here to spend the holidays with us.”
“Well, be gentle when you turn Duff down. The poor man is so far away from his ancestral home, I’m sure that Christmas is a difficult time for him.”
Smoke’s eyebrows rose. “Why would I turn him down? I’m the one who hinted that we would be receptive to an invitation in the first place.”
“What? Smoke, I thought we were going to New York for Christmas.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?” Sally frowned. “Didn’t we make that decision this past summer?”
“You said it had been a long time since you were in New York, and you’d like to go back for a visit sometime. That’s not making a decision, that’s talking about it. Besides, Matt and I have to be at Fort Russell, Wyoming, in December to sell our horses, so it just seems natural that, since we are going to be up there, anyway, that we drop in on Duff.”
“But, Smoke—”
“And didn’t you just say that you thought Christmas might be a difficult time for him? Where is your compassion?”
Sally laughed. “I hate it when we are arguing and you use my own words on me.”
“Were we just arguing?”
“Of a sort, I suppose.”
Smoke smiled then reached for her. “Good. The best part of arguing is making up,” he said, pulling her to him.
Big Rock, Colorado
At the moment, Matt Jensen was in Longmont’s Saloon, watching a three-card game that Louis Longmont was playing with a traveling gambler named Sherman who had not given a first name.
He had been having an inordinate run of luck since he came to town, so much luck that Longmont was convinced Sherman was helping his odds with a little card manipulation.
Sherman didn’t know that Longmont wasn’t just a saloon owner. He was also an exceptionally skilled gambler. Practically a magician with cards.
The game they were playing was a simple game, not too unlike the game of finding the pea under the shell. In this case, Sherman had to find the ace after watching Longmont shift the cards around in front of him. Sherman had tried his luck three times, and every time he had lost.
Another patron engaged the saloon owner in conversation. It wasn’t idle conversation. It was a setup. The patron was a secret partner, sometimes letting Sherman know by coded signals what cards the mark was holding. In this case, his only purpose was to divert Longmont’s attention.
With his opponent’s attention shifted, Sherman reached across the table and put a small, barely noticeable, crease on one corner of the ace. Longmont could switch the cards around any way he wanted. Sherman wouldn’t even attempt to follow him. He would simply select the card with the creased corner.
“You going to play cards, or are you going to talk all day?” Sherman asked.
Longmont turned back to the table. “Why, I’m going to play cards, Mr. Sherman,” Longmont said, smiling easily.
“Only, this time, let’s bet some real money,” Sherman suggested. He put ten twenty-dollar gold pieces on the table.
“That’s a pretty steep bet for a little friendly game like this, isn’t it?”
“You own the saloon. Surely you can afford it.”
Longmont smiled. “Oh, I can afford it.”
As he put his own money on the table matching the bet, Sherman took one last look at the creased card. So far, Longmont hadn’t noticed it. How could he? It was so subtle a crease that it was barely discernible, even to Sherman, and he was the one who put it there.
Longmont picked up the three cards and began shuffling them around. Sherman looked over at his partner and nodded. Longmont put the cards down on the table, then began moving them around, in and out, over and under with such lightning speed that the cards were nearly a blur. When he stopped, the three cards lay in front of him, waiting for Sherman to pick the ace.
Smiling confidently, Sherman reached across the table to make his selection . . . then suddenly froze in mid-motion. The smile left his face. His hand hung suspended over the table as he stared at the three cards with a sickly expression on his face.
“Hard to pick out the ace when they all look alike, isn’t it, mon ami?” Longmont asked.
“Yeah,” Sherman said with a weak response. He had been had. Somehow Longmont had not only picked up on the card with the tiny crease, he had duplicated that crease on the other two cards, doing it so perfectly that Sherman had no idea which was the one he had marked.
“Are you going to pick a card or not?” Sherman turned up a card. It was a queen. “Damn!”
“Maybe this isn’t your game,” Longmont suggested as he pulled back the money from the center of the table. “I don’t believe the ace is even on the table.”
“Oh, it’s on the table, all right.” Longmont reached for one of the cards.
“Wait a minute. I’ll turn it over,” Sherman said. “For all I know you have an ace palmed. You can make it appear anywhere you want.”
“All right. You turn it over.”
Sherman reached for the card Longmont had started for and flipped it over. It was the ace. “Damn,” he said again.
“Actually, I can make an ace appear anywhere I want.”
Longmont picked up a new deck of cards, shuffled them, then spread them all out, facedown, on the table. “Here’s the ace of diamonds,” he said, turning it up. “The ace of clubs, the ace of hearts, and the ace of spades.”
“What? How the hell did you do that?”
“Here are the four kings,” Longmont added, pulling them from the spread-out deck. “Here are the queens, and here are the jacks.”
“I . . .” “You have run into someone who was not only able to catch you, but is a hell of a lot better at it than you,” Matt said.
The others gathered around the table to watch laughed.
“I tell you what, Mr. Sherman,” Longmont said, sliding ten of the twenty-dollar gold pieces back across the table. “Take your money, but leave my saloon and don’t come back. When my customers play cards in here, they have a right to expect an honest game.”
Sherman stared at the money for a moment, then he reached for it. “A man has to make a living.”
“Yes, and most of my customers do that by the sweat of their brow, not by sitting at a table, cheating others.” Sherman nodded.
“And take your partner with you,” Longmont added, looking at the man who had attempted to divert his attention earlier. “You can have one last drink, then both of you go.”
“Thanks anyway, but we aren’t thirsty.” With a glance toward his partner, Sherman started toward the door.
“Oh, and Joyeux Noël,” Longmont called as the two men left.
I was lucky enough to get an advance read of this November's release from William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone - a good thing, because I'll surely be reading it again come Christmas time.
Nobody but Johnstone could mix romance, roughnecks, robbery and the wonder of the Christmas season so well. Armed bandits take over the Red Cliff Special only a few days before Christmas to free a prisoner, not realizing the insurmountable odds fate had placed in their path. Matt Jensen, aboard the train on his way to visit Smoke and Sally for Christmas, means to help the passengers survive and with the help of some old friends, he succeeds. Justice takes aim and fires a shot, nearly bringing down a snow-covered mountain in the process. Perfect for a good read by the fire on a cold winter night, A Rocky Mountain Christmas doesn’t disappoint.
