A Hill of Beans

Book 3: Chuckwagon Trail Western

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

With two trail drives under his belt, Dewey "Mac" Mackenzie has proven to be more than a good chuckwagon cook. He's good at serving up justice, too—with a side of hot lead . . .

Mac Mackenzie has enough problems on his plate. He's got bounty hunters on his tail, no one on his side, and no place to hide. Just when he thinks it can't get any worse, he hears the rumbling of a cattle stampede—heading straight for his camp. Mac's got two choices: Get trampled like a weed or saddle up and help get the herd under control. At first, the traildrivers ain't too pleased to have a stranger help them out. But once they realize Mac's not a rustler, they ask him to join the team. Mac takes them up on the offer—especially after he meets the cowgirl Colleen—and quickly impresses everyone with his cooking skills. There's just a few more problems:

Mac's new employers are the real rustlers. And Mac's stepped out of the frying pan into the fire . . .

Release date: March 31, 2020

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 296

Sample

Dewey “Mac” Mackenzie was settled in for the night. His horse, picketed close by, grazed contentedly. The campfire burned low, crackling softly and issuing an occasional muted pop that sent a brief swirl of sparks dancing above the flames. Evening meal resting comfortably in his belly, Mac sat cross-legged on his bedroll, nursing a final cup of coffee before he’d be ready to stretch out, pull the blankets over him, and drift off to sleep.

Life wasn’t too bad, Mac decided. After spending the past several months on a pair of separate trail drives followed by a brief but memorable stopover in the crowded, frantically expanding city of Denver, he savored this period of quiet solitude. The crews of the trail drives he’d joined were, for the most part, decent, hardworking hombres whose colorful ways and rough-hewn sense of humor he’d enjoyed being around. A couple of the men had made lasting impressions he would carry in his memory for a long time, even though he had to move on and go his own way. And the time he’d spent in Denver had been an enjoyable experience, too.

But at the same time, the latter had proven beyond any doubt that he was no longer cut out for big-city life beyond an occasional visit for the good times to be had.

So now, with all that behind him, Mac was on the drift, alone, and it felt pretty good. He still had a few dollars left in his pocket, even after his generous sampling of Denver nightlife, and he had a vague notion of heading west, toward California, but without any particular sense of urgency.

In fact, the only real urgency in Mac’s life was trying to ride clear of certain events that had befallen him nearly two years ago down in New Orleans. They had cost him the woman he’d once believed to be the love of his life—Evangeline, who now loathed him due to falling for a pack of lies that convinced her he was responsible for the brutal murder of her father.

The perpetrator of those lies, the true murderer yet the man she had now fallen in love with and was wed to, was one Pierre Leclerc, a cunning schemer out to attain the holdings and wealth of the family he had successfully married into.

To make sure nothing got in the way of all he had so ruthlessly gained, Leclerc had hired a virtual army of bounty hunters to track down and kill Mac to prevent him from ever returning and attempting to reveal the truth. Members of Leclerc’s horde had caught up with Mac on each of his recent cattle drives, but with some luck and a little help from his new trail pards, Mac had managed to keep from falling prey to them.

For the time being at least, Mac felt reasonably confident none of Leclerc’s hounds were barking anywhere close on his heels. That was the way he wanted to keep it, a big part of why he meant to stay on the move and put as much distance between himself and New Orleans as possible.

After draining the last of the coffee, Mac was slapping the grounds out of the bottom of the cup when his horse, picketed over on the other side of the campfire, suddenly perked up its ears and chuffed nervously about something. Mac had been riding the deep-chested paint long enough to have developed a trust in its instincts.

He rose to his feet, right hand absently brushing across the Smith & Wesson Model 3 revolver tucked in the belt of his pants. The horse stood poised, not overly agitated yet very alert to something. Mac swept his gaze in all directions, peering into the darkness as deeply as he could. He saw nothing and neither did he hear anything.

But then he did. A low, distant rumble. Very faint but growing louder and closer. At first he thought it might be far-off thunder from a storm moving in. However, a quick scan of the sky showed nothing but an uninterrupted wash of stars from horizon to horizon.

Then full recognition hit Mac. He’d heard that sound before. Too many times. And it only took once for it to make a lasting impression.

Somewhere not too far away, a herd of cattle had been spooked and was on the run. A full-blown stampede was underway, and as the rumble grew louder, Mac judged a pretty good-sized herd was caught up in it.

His first instinct was to saddle up and ride out to see if he could try and help turn the herd. Then he hesitated, remembering that not only wasn’t he part of the outfit driving the herd but—except for a general sense that the stampede was occurring somewhere off to the south—he couldn’t even be sure of locating it and catching up in time to do any good.

Once more, however, the paint had a say in the matter. It chuffed again and pawed the ground with one of its front hooves. A trained cow pony, the animal also recognized the sound and knew it had a part to play when cattle were running out of control.

Mac gave a grunt of his own. Danged if the nag wasn’t right. He ought to at least try to lend a hand, no matter what. The damage a stampede could do, both to the cattle themselves as well as the wranglers trying to stop them, could be plenty serious. And anybody who was close enough and had the right experience should feel obligated to pitch in and offer some aid.

Moving quickly, Mac grabbed his saddle and slapped it on the paint’s back. Fingers flying with well-practiced movements, he had the gear cinched up in no time. A moment later, he was mounted and wheeling the paint around, then kneeing the eager animal into motion.

The rumble grew steadily louder. Given the way sound had a sometimes-tricky way of fanning out across prairie terrain and making it difficult to pinpoint the exact location of its source, Mac gave the paint its head. It seemed to have a strong sense of where they needed to go.

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before they topped a grassy hill and came in sight of the boiling mass of stampeding longhorns. In fact, the onrushing critters were headed straight toward them. Luckily, they were still far enough off to allow Mac time to swing the paint out of the way and then fall in beside the panicked herd as those in the lead went thundering by.

This put Mac in a good position to go to work on halting the stampede. The way it was done—at least the way he had been taught—was to force the lead animals to turn back against the flow of those rushing behind. This created the equivalent of a dam being thrown up against a torrent of floodwater. The resulting collision of massive bodies sometimes caused some unfortunate injuries, but still less than the trampling and goring that would take place if the stampede continued unchecked.

Mac dug his heels into the paint, urging it faster, aiming to once again draw even with the frontrunners of the rushing cattle. He felt excitement building inside him, caught up by the roar of pounding hooves, the taste of dust on his tongue, the frantic bawl of the cattle, and the reflection of moonlight in their wild eyes and on the tips of their slashing horns.

As he rode, Mac became aware of other horsemen closing in to attempt the same task. At least one on the other side of the herd and one or two more coming up behind him.

The land was a series of blunt hills and shallow draws, with a few rock outcrops poking up here and there. As he drew even with the front of the herd, Mac peered ahead, wishing for more rugged features to help slow the cattle but seeing none. But with or without any help from Mother Nature, the cattle still had to be stopped. Drawing the Smith & Wesson from his belt, he reined the paint closer to the leaders and fired some shots skyward.

“Heeyah! Ease up, cattle! Ease up!”

The horseman across the way began cracking a long whip in front of the longhorns’ snouts, also shouting and cursing. Two riders closed in around Mac and started firing their pistols, too.

“Turn, cattle! Turn, you muleheads!”

Some of the leaders began swinging their heads inward toward the middle of the mass, pulling away from the gunshots and the pop of the whip, balking, slowing down slightly. But the push of the cattle in the middle and at the rear drove them on.

Then, finally, the terrain dealt a bit of a helping hand by way of a sharp slope feeding down into a wide, funnel-shaped depression with some stubbly rocks rimming the far side.

“There! There!” somebody shouted. “Drive ’em into that choke point! With the sides squeezin’ in on ’em and those rocks rising up in their faces, they’ll have to slow down!”

And that’s pretty much the way it went. With the sloping walls of the depression pressing them from the sides, the cattle plunged into the funnel-shaped opening. There, the rim of stubbled rocks and the ongoing shooting and shouting of the cowboys did the rest—turning back the leaders and at last bringing the whole strung-out mass to a weary, puffing halt.

“Let ’em mill! Let ’em mill! They’re good and tired out now. As soon as they discover there’s decent grass under their feet, they’ll be happy to stay right here for the rest of the night.”

Mac couldn’t get a good look at who was giving this advice. But whoever it was, it was good advice to follow.

As the herd steadily grew calmer, showing more and more signs that all the run was worn out of them, Mac continued to ride the paint slowly back and forth alongside them, talking low and soothingly. Just to make sure.

Only when he was satisfied the cattle were sufficiently settled down did he look around for some of the other riders who’d also been in the thick of things. He spotted three of them clustered together twenty yards away and gigged his paint toward them.

“Hey, fellas,” he said as he drew nearer. “Those cows sure had themselves worked into a state. What riled ’em, anyway?”

One of the three men snapped his face around and aimed a menacing look in Mac’s direction. Half a second later, he was aiming something else—the hogleg he’d pulled from the holster on his hip.

“You ought to know, you rustling polecat! And something else you’re about to learn real quick is what a big mistake it is to mess with what belongs to the Rafter B!”

With that, his finger tightened on the trigger and the hammer came down—striking with an empty click that really wasn’t very loud but was still enough to cause Mac to jerk reflexively in his saddle.

Twice more the would-be gunman cocked and triggered the Colt, with the same results. It was suddenly clear that he’d fired off all the cartridges in his wheel while getting the herd turned and hadn’t yet bothered to reload.

That realization hit Mac along with a wave of instant anger—anger quickly whipped into rage by the thought of this ungrateful varmint trying to shoot him after he’d risked his neck helping save the skunk’s herd.

Driven by this rage, and with no conscious thought beyond it, Mac dug his heels into the paint’s ribs and charged straight at the man still pointing his empty gun. The paint thudded heavily against the other man’s horse and knocked it to one side.

In the same instant, Mac launched from the saddle and flung himself onto the man who’d tried to shoot him. The Colt went flying, the horses twisted away, and the two men toppled to the ground in a tangle of flying fists.

Luckily, Mac landed mostly on top. The impact of hitting the ground was still jarring, but hardly enough to curb Mac’s anger or to slow the barrage of punches he continued to launch.

The man absorbing those punches was taller, a lantern-jawed specimen leaner in build and not as thickly muscled as Mac. He quickly proved to be a scrapper, though, and neither the blows Mac was landing nor the crash to earth seemed to have knocked any noticeable amount of fight out of him. His own fists and elbows shot up and around and drilled frequently into Mac as the pair rolled pummeling and kicking across the ground.

With neither man gaining any advantage that way, they broke apart and scrambled to their feet. Mac immediately went on the attack again, lunging forward and throwing a whistling roundhouse right at the point of his opponent’s prominent chin. The taller man jerked his head back at the last second, however, so the blow ended up being only a glancing one. It was still enough to knock the tall man off balance, sending him staggering a step and a half to his right.

Mac moved after him, stepping in close and following up with a left hook to the ribs that landed solidly. A whoof! of escaping breath issued from the tall man, and he bent sharply toward the side where the blow had landed.

But then Mac got too eager and let his forward momentum pull him in too close. His opponent made him pay for it with a slashing left elbow that whipped back with blinding speed and banged hard against the side of Mac’s head. Bells went off and stars danced before his eyes, and this time it was Mac who did a stutter step.

Before he could catch his balance and try to shift away long enough to let some of the stars fade, the tall man finished his spinning move and brought around a clubbing right that slammed against the side of Mac’s head at almost the same exact spot as where the elbow had landed.

This time Mac did more than stumble. He staggered violently, his knees feeling momentarily rubbery, almost giving out on him. But the rage still burned strongly enough in him to force him to stay on his feet. Blast it, he would not go down to this cowardly cowboy who’d drawn and fired on him for no good reason.

Mac planted his heels stubbornly as the tall man came rushing toward him. Instead of trying to hold up against the rush, Mac hurled himself forward also. He barely had time to build any momentum of his own, but at the last second, he leaned forward—ducking the tall man’s punch as he did so—and lowered his head so that it rammed squarely into his attacker’s solar plexus.

The tall man’s forward movement abruptly halted. He folded forward, his chest, shoulders, and face flopping down over Mac’s shoulder as he expelled another great gush of air driven from every corner of his stomach and lungs. Mac straightened up with a sudden surge and flung his opponent off. As the tall man stumbled backward—clutching his belly with both arms, mouth formed into a perfect “O” as he tried desperately to suck some breath back in—Mac stepped after him and put all his weight into a right cross that smashed devastatingly into the inviting bull’s-eye made by that mouth. The tall man dropped like he’d been pole-axed.

Mac took another step and stood over him, wavering slightly, his still-balled fists hanging loosely at his sides. He wasn’t the type to stomp a man when he was down, so as far as he was concerned the fight was over.

It suddenly became apparent there were others ready to make sure of that when the sound of pistols being cocked caused Mac’s head to snap around and he found himself staring into the gun muzzles of the other two riders who’d been with the tall man when Mac first rode up.

“Does everybody in your outfit draw on every stranger you see?”

Before either of the gun-toters could respond, a new voice called from a short distance away, “Hold up with those guns! What’s going on here?”

Mac and the other men turned their heads to watch the approach of two figures on horseback. One was broad-shouldered and erect in the saddle, the other, trailing a few feet behind, was barely discernible in the murkiness of the night.

The front rider reined in when he got within a few feet and revealed himself to be an elderly gent with bristly white sideburns and thick, contrastingly black eyebrows currently bunched together in a fierce scowl. In the same raspy voice that had called out a moment earlier, he spoke again. “I asked a question, blast it—what’s going on here?”

“It’s this hombre,” said one of the cowboys, jerking his chin toward Mac. The speaker looked to be in his middle twenties, with a narrow face, sleepy eyes, and an unruly tangle of fiery red curls poking out from under the front of his hat. He went on, “When he rode up out of nowhere, Roman took him for one of the rustlers who must have got separated from the rest of his bunch. Roman tried to get the drop on him, but the sneaky devil sucker-punched Roman and knocked him down.”

“He didn’t try to get the drop on me,” Mac countered hotly. “He flat-out tried to shoot me, is what he did! He would have, too, if he hadn’t forgotten to reload his gun after firing off all the rounds working to slow the stampede. When his hammer came down on nothing but spent cartridges, you bet I tore into him. I don’t see how anybody can claim I threw a sucker punch, though, not when he was already waving a gun in my face. If he’d had any bullets left in it, I’d be the one laying in the dirt—pumped full of slugs!”

The older gent peered intently at the red-haired cowboy. “That’s a little different than the way you told it, Sparky. Any truth to his version?”

The puncher addressed as Sparky shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. “Well, it all happened pretty fast . . . I mean, Roman did draw his gun and all. Like I told you, he figured he was lookin’ at one of the rustlers . . . and why else would this stranger pop up out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“I can answer that,” Mac was quick to say. Jerking a thumb over his shoulder, he went on to explain, “I was camped a couple miles back. Right in the path of your herd, as it turned out. When I recognized the sound of a stampede—a sound I know all too well, from having been in my share—I saddled up and rode out to see if I could help. And I did, too, doggone it. If there’s an honest man in your outfit, somebody surely must have seen me.”

“I can vouch for his claim,” spoke up the second of the two newly arrived riders, moving up alongside the white-haired man.

Mac’s first reaction was a surge of relief, grateful that someone had spotted him and was willing to say so. A moment later, when he got a better look at the second rider, he found even more to appreciate. Because what he saw, moving her horse forward out of the twilight murkiness, was a very attractive young woman returning his gaze with a self-assured boldness.

She appeared barely past twenty, a mane of thick chestnut hair spilling from under a cocked Stetson to frame a face highlighted by intelligent, challenging eyes and a wide, lush mouth. Below that, womanly curves filled out the standard trail garb she wore just fine, and it was all Mac could do to keep from gawking like some calf-eyed fool.

“Assuming that paint horse standing over yonder belongs to the stranger,” the girl continued, “I spotted them right in the thick of turning the herd. And like he said, it looked to me like he was a big help.”

“That hardly sounds like the actions of a rustler,” the old-timer said, frowning thoughtfully. “Unless, that is, Roman was right to suspect this fella might be part of the crew that hit our herd and somehow got separated from the others.”

“Come on, Father,” the girl said in an impatient tone. “Even if that were the case, what sense would it make for him to stick around? Once the cattle started running, he could have easily ridden away and eventually caught back up with the others. And especially, why would any rustler put himself at risk to help stop a stampede he was involved in starting to begin with?”

By this point, the man Mac had knocked down—referred to as “Roman”—was struggling to get back up. He groaned as he pushed himself onto one elbow, gasping and wheezing as he tried to pull some air back into his lungs.

“Sparky, Nolan,” the white-haired man barked. “Climb down and give him a hand.”

The two cowboys promptly proceeded to do as ordered.

The white-haired man’s gaze returned to Mac. “Young fella,” he said, “my daughter has me ready to give you the benefit of the doubt. But before I’m willing to commit, I think it’s only right to allow Roman a chance to have his say. In the meantime, my name is Norris Bradley. I own the Rafter B spread down in Bellow County, Texas. The longhorns you apparently helped stop from running themselves to ruination are mine. This is my daughter, Colleen”—a tip of his head toward the girl—“and you’ve already, er, made the acquaintance of my son Roman.”

Mac winced inwardly at the revelation that the man he’d knocked down was this old rooster’s son.

“How about you? You got a name?” Bradley wanted to know.

Mac answered, “Mackenzie. Dewey Mackenzie. Most folks just call me Mac.”

“I don’t give a hoot what he’s called,” growled Roman, now having been helped to his feet. “What matters is what he is—and that’s a dirty stinkin’ rustler!”

“Now hold on a minute,” Bradley responded. “You’ve already made your opinion plenty clear. Trouble is, there’s some pretty convincing evidence you’re mistaken.”

“The hell I am,” Roman snapped back. “If this ranny ain’t up to no good, then what’s he doing sneakin’ around the edges of our herd as soon as we got ’em stopped?”

“That’s already been answered,” his sister told him. “You would have heard if you hadn’t been so busy trying to pick yourself up off the ground.”

Roman glared at her. “Yeah, and why was I on the ground? Because I was quick to have this varmint pegged for what he was and what he was up to—looking to pick out a few more cows he could steal to go with however many his buddies already slicked away before they started the stampede.”

“So you tried to shoot him on the spot?” Colleen accused. “Without taking even a second to try and find out if there was another explanation?”

“His showing up the way he did was all the explanation I needed!”

“And if you’d succeeded in jumping to that conclusion and following through with it,” Bradley said, “you very likely would have shot an innocent man.”

“Innocent? How in blazes can you—”

Bradley made a slashing motion with his hand. “Shut up! You and that hair-triggered temper of yours. Isn’t the trouble it’s gotten you in ever going to teach you to hold it in check—at least once in a while?”

Roman looked torn between anger and puzzlement. “I don’t understand, Pa. What did I do that was so wrong? What about this piece of trail trash makes you think he’s so innocent?”

“Because the reason this man is here is that he risked his neck to pitch in and help turn our herd. Does that sound like something a rustler would do?”

“Who says he played any part in turning the herd?” Roman demanded. “You taking his word on that?”

“I say he played a part. A big part,” Colleen spoke up. “I already told you, I saw him right in the thick of it.”

“You!” Roman practically spat. “You’d say that just to spite me.”

“Now don’t you two start in,” Bradley warned.

The cowboy referred to as Nolan, a lean, middle-aged man with a face worn beyond its actual years by long exposure to the wind and sun, cleared his throat.

“I, uh . . . I kinda saw the same as Miss Colleen,” he said. “That fella and his big paint, they helped turn the herd right enough. I seen ’em right there toward the front, makin’ a big difference.”

Roman shot him a dirty look.

“Okay, that settles it,” Bradley said. “Here’s what I suggest we do. No, make that what I say we’ll do. Nolan, you and Sparky stay here with the herd. They’re tuckered out, I don’t think they’ll spook easily again. But hang around, keep an eye on things, and keep ’em soothed just the same. I’ll send a couple other boys to relieve you in a few hours. The rest of us are going on back to our camp. We’ll finish sorting this out when we get there, and get a general idea of how many cattle we lost on the way.”

His eyes settled on Mac. “That includes you. I figure, at the very least, we owe you a place to bed down for the night and a hot breakfast in the morning. You got any objection?”

Mac considered. He tossed a couple of quick glances to the two Bradley siblings. One was looking at him invitingly, the other menacingly.

“No,” he replied to their father. “No objection at all.”

By Mac’s reckoning, they covered more than four miles before reaching the Rafter B night camp. That was how far the stampede had carried the herd. Along the way, Bradley tallied an even two dozen carcasses of unfortunate critters who’d fallen and been trampled by their own kind. In all likelihood, ten or a dozen more lay unseen somewhere out in the darkness.

Also on the way, Mac was able to show the others the remains of his campsite. There wasn’t much to see except for a scorched patch of ground where his campfire had been and a few tatters of his bedroll fluttering up out of the mangled ground. The coffeepot he’d left behind was kicked and stomped to oblivion. Luckily, most of his gear was in the saddlebags that he’d thrown across the paint’s back along with the saddle when he hurriedly mounted up and rode away from the spot.

This meager bit of evidence was further proof to back up Mac’s story that he wasn’t part of any rustling crew. He could see acceptance and added conviction of this on the faces of Bradley and Colleen, but Roman only continued to glower, not willing to give an inch on what he stubbornly had his mind made up to believe.

As they progressed toward the camp, they were joined by other Rafter B riders who’d gotten strung out chasing the herd, among them Bradley’s middle and youngest sons—Henry and George, respectively. Henry was fair-haired and handsome, middle twenties, with a sun- and wind-burned face and a quiet, easygoing manner that seemed in sharp contrast to his hotheaded older brother. George was not only the youngest brother, but he was also a year or so younger than Colleen and came across as a rambunctious sort with boyish good looks, a thatch of curly hair the same chestnut color as his sister’s, and an excitable air about him that kept him talking and asking questions.

A third man to fall in with them was int. . .