A Preacher Christmas

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Holiday books; Westerns

Synopsis

In a Christmas Eve showdown from the bestselling masters of the American West, the legendary trio of Preacher, Audie, and Nighthawk team up to take on the not-so-jolly night raider Forkbeard.

‘Tis the season for family and friends to get together—even for rugged mountain men like Preacher and his buddies. This year, they’re planning to visit an old friend, Tall Dog, a half-Crow, half-Viking warrior who lives in the north woods of Canada. Tall Dog’s wife is expecting a baby and everyone’s looking forward to the blessed event. What they aren’t looking forward to is a treacherous trek through the snow-covered woods—or the unsavory characters who roam there. Preacher figures they can’t possibly be more dangerous than what he’s seen in the wilds of the American frontier. But he’s wrong.

These woods are haunted—by a devilish Dane known as Forkbeard.

He might have a beard like the legendary Saint Nicholas, but Forkbeard is the polar opposite of the jolly gift-giver. He’s a deranged madman who raids villages with his merciless tribe of maurauders to avenge his ancestors—or so he says. As far as Preacher can tell, the man is just a low-life thief who terrorizes innocent families. But there appears to be more to the story. According to legend, there’s a treasure trove of Viking artifacts at stake, and Forkbeard will do anything to claim them.

This Christmas Eve, Preacher and his friends won’t be opening presents. They’ll be closing ranks on a crazed bearded killer—in the ultimate holiday showdown.

 

THE THREE WISE MEN OF THE WEST—JOHNSTONE STYLE.

Release date: October 27, 2026

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

When Preacher heard the faint noise in the brush behind him, he moved his hand just enough to close his fingers around the wooden handle of the big hunting knife tucked behind his belt in a fringed sheath.

The campfire in front of him crackled merrily, and Audie was talking, as Audie often was. Whoever was sneaking up behind Preacher probably thought that would be enough to cover up any slight sounds he might make.

The mountain man’s hearing was incredibly keen, however, and sensitive enough to pick out the things that shouldn’t be there.

Like the crack, almost too quiet to hear, of a twig breaking under somebody’s foot.

Preacher eased the blade an inch or so out of its sheath. Whoever was skulking around, they were going to find a surprise waiting for them: durned near a foot of cold steel.

“And then,” Audie said, leaning forward and gesturing as he spoke across the flames to the giant Crow warrior known as Nighthawk, “and this is the amusing part … and then he said, ‘If I had known you were going to take offense, I would have compared him to Epictetus instead of Marcus Aurelius!’”

Audie slapped his thigh in sheer glee as he rocked back and forth on the log where he sat.

Nighthawk nodded slowly and solemnly and said, “Umm.”

“Yes, indeed, the entire room erupted in peals of hilarity, I tell you. It took a long time for Wentworth to recover from that bon mot, I assure you.”

Another twig snapped behind Preacher, closer this time. He hadn’t been looking into the flames to start with. That was a mighty good way for a man to ruin his night vision and get himself killed. But as soon as he had heard somebody sneaking up on him, he had peered intently at the darkest shadow he could find to make his eyes adjust even more. He would be able to see just fine once the varmint got around to making his move.

Which, in a way, Preacher hoped would be soon. Otherwise, Audie was liable to start on another one of those stories that made just about as much sense as a bunch of frogs playing fiddles and singing and dancing.

Audie finally stopped laughing at his own story. He dabbed away tears of amusement with his left hand.

“I really shouldn’t be making sport of Wentworth like this,” he said. “The poor fellow tried to fit in with the rest of the faculty, he really did—Get down, Preacher!”

Preacher threw himself to his left. As he came off the log, he slid the knife from its sheath.

A few feet away, Audie bolted upright to his full height of a little less than four feet and drew a flintlock pistol from behind his belt in the same movement. He thrust the pistol toward the thick brush behind where Preacher had been sitting and pulled the trigger.

The pistol boomed as smoke and flame gushed from its muzzle. The Indian who had burst out of the brush with a tomahawk held high, ready to sweep down and cleave Preacher’s skull, stopped short and rocked back as the heavy lead ball plowed into his chest.

The attacker wasn’t alone. Another Indian, screeching in anger, crashed out of the brush and brandished a tomahawk, as well.

Preacher had used the momentum of his dive to roll over and surge back to his feet. He was ready to take on the second would-be killer. As the tomahawk swept down at him, Preacher blocked the stroke with his left forearm and drove the knife under the Indian’s chin into his throat.

The blade grated on the man’s spine, but that didn’t slow it down. The point ripped out the back of the Indian’s neck.

Nighthawk was up, too, towering over everyone with his great height. He plunged into the brush, and a great disturbance followed with the branches jerking and waving back and forth.

When he backed into the open, he had hold of two buckskin-clad warriors. He gripped each man by the neck from behind, an indication that he had caught them as they turned and tried to flee.

As Nighthawk stepped into the circle of firelight, Preacher saw that the moccasin-shod feet of the men the giant Crow had hold of dangled several inches off the ground. Nighthawk growled and shook one of them like a dog with a rat, jerking the man’s body one way and then the other so forcefully that his neck broke with an audible crack.

Nighthawk might have dealt with the fourth attacker the same way, but Preacher stopped him by saying, “Hold on there, old son. Don’t kill the varmint just yet.”

Nighthawk grunted and swung around so that Preacher could see the face of the man the huge warrior held. He studied the Indian’s clothing and hair and said, “Ree.”

That was a common nickname among mountain men for the Arikara, one of the tribes that lived in these parts.

“I agree,” Audie said. “But that’s puzzling because I was under the impression the Arikara are friendly.”

“They might’ve been, but Indians are notional folks. Ain’t that right, Nighthawk?”

Nighthawk rolled his eyes, nodded emphatically, and said, “Umm.”

“Yes, I suppose if anyone has a right to agree with that, it’s you,” Audie said to his old friend.

Preacher pointed to the ground and told Nighthawk, “Put him down.”

The towering warrior growled again, gave his captive a hard shake for good measure, and dropped him to the dirt next to the fire.

He tossed the dead man a few yards away with the callous disregard of a child throwing aside a toy he was bored with.

Preacher knelt next to the still-living Arikara warrior, held the knife to his throat, and asked, “How come you and your pards jumped us, mister? Have the Ree gone on the warpath?”

The warrior just glared up at him as if daring Preacher to go ahead and cut his throat. He didn’t answer the mountain man’s questions.

Audie was examining the bodies of the men he and Preacher had killed. He looked up and said, “These men are Mandan, not Arikara.”

“They’re kinfolks, ain’t they? Or at least the Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa all get along together.”

“Indeed, but it’s not that common for warriors of the different tribes to be traveling together in a small group such as this. It would be different if a great many of them from different bands had gathered to fight a common enemy, for example, the Sioux.”

“What are you gettin’ at?”

“I suspect that they’re outcasts. Renegades, if you will, forced to leave their respective villages for some reason. They formed an alliance to enhance their chances for survival.”

“Renegades,” Preacher mused. “I reckon that could be the explanation, all right. They figured they’d kill us and take our supplies and horses.”

The prisoner spat angry words in his native tongue. Preacher was fluent in the Arikara language and understood the hate-filled diatribe.

“Yeah, I understand, you’re an unfriendly varmint. I reckon the smartest thing for me to do would be to go ahead and cut your throat. Lucky for you, I’m in a friendly mood, what with it comin’ up on Christmas and all.”

The approaching Yuletide season was, in fact, the reason Preacher and his friends found themselves here in the upper reaches of unorganized territory not far from the border of the British provinces of North America.

This was sparsely settled country, five hundred miles west of the Great Lakes, populated mostly by Indians, fur trappers, and a few hardy entrepreneurs who had established trading posts along the many rivers and streams.

The normal base of operations for Preacher, Audie, and Nighthawk was farther west in the Rocky Mountains, where for many years they had been trapping beaver and other fur-bearing animals.

But they had been in this part of the country before, most recently a couple of years earlier, when they had journeyed north across the border to the village of Skarkavik, settled on the shores of a huge lake by Norwegian immigrants who chose to live like their Viking ancestors.

That trip had been in response to a summons for help from another friend of Preacher’s, the grandfather of Bjorn Gunnarson, a strapping half-Norwegian, half-Crow warrior who usually went by the name Tall Dog.

After helping save Skarkavik from an evil timber baron bent on taking over the area, Tall Dog had decided to remain at the village with his grandfather while Preacher, Audie, and Nighthawk returned to their usual mountain haunts.

A few weeks earlier, the three friends had been at Dutch Charley’s Trading Post, a long way southwest of here, when Audie had said, “We ought to go see Bjorn and celebrate Christmas with him.”

They were sitting at a table near the fireplace where flames crackled and danced, warming the big, low-ceilinged room. This half of the building was a tavern, while the other side served as the trading post and general mercantile.

Preacher leaned back in his chair, stretched out his long legs, and crossed them at the ankle. He picked up the mug of beer Dutch Charley Hennenberger had drawn for him a few minutes earlier and took a sip from it, then used the back of his other hand to wipe foam from the gray-shot mustache that drooped over his wide mouth.

“I didn’t know that Vikings celebrated Christmas,” he said.

Audie had placed a box on his chair so he could sit on it and reach the table, where a glass of mulled wine was in front of him. He had spent many years as a professor at a noted university back east before following a longtime dream and heading west to become a mountain man. Even though he had fit in quite well with the rough frontier life, his educated background gave him more refined tastes, which he indulged now and then.

“Their winter celebration is known as Yule,” he said, “but it shares numerous traditions with our Christmas. Or rather, our Christmas traditions borrow heavily from Yule, which began as a pagan festival centered around their harsh northern pantheon. No doubt that borrowing of traditions came about because of the Viking presence in what became England, where many of them decided to settle and become farmers instead of continuing their raiding, plundering ways. And once there, as you know, most of them converted to Christianity, so the two holidays dovetailed neatly together.”

Preacher cocked an eyebrow and said, “You give me more credit for knowin’ about such things than I’ve got comin’. Tall Dog used to tell me some o’ them old Viking tales. Sagas, he called ’em, and they were sure full of blood and thunder. Made for some mighty fine listenin’ around a campfire. But I don’t recollect him ever talkin’ about Christmas.”

“Well, you can trust me about this. There’ll be a Christmas celebration in Skarkavik, complete with feasting and a Yule log.”

“I always trust you, Audie,” Preacher said with a grin. “You know more about more things than anybody else I’ve ever come across.”

“Umm,” Nighthawk said in agreement. The big Crow didn’t drink alcohol, but he had a small pile of hard candies in front of him, and from time to time, he would pop one in his mouth and suck on it with a blissful expression that seemed to say he was being transported to heaven.

“At any rate,” Audie said, “if we set out now, I believe we could arrive at Skarkavik by the winter solstice, in time to celebrate both Christmas and Yule with our friends. I’m sure it’s quite a festive occasion for them.”

“Let me get this straight,” Preacher said. “You want to go north for the winter. Ain’t that sort of backwards from the way folks usually do it?”

“The weather has been mild so far this year. There’s every reason to believe that we wouldn’t encounter any conditions that would be too unfavorable for travel.”

“Maybe not, but if a blizzard was to blow in while we were up there, we might not be able to get back,” Preacher pointed out.

“In which case, you know that Bjorn and his people would be happy to have us spend the winter with them.”

Preacher nodded. “That’s true.”

“And it’s not as if we do much more during the winter than just wait it out, no matter where we are.”

Audie was right about that, too. Normally, they wintered at some Indian village, mending their traps and other gear and doing a little hunting for meat, but for the most part just taking life easy. Many of the tribes were quite hospitable and even provided a young woman or two for cooking, companionship, and warming an hombre’s buffalo robes.

Preacher had a hunch that spending the winter in Skarkavik would offer those same amenities. Now that he thought about it, he liked Audie’s idea better and better.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll go see what Tall Dog’s been up to.” He grinned. “Wouldn’t surprise me none if him and Betsy have themselves a family by now.”

Beautiful, auburn-haired Betsy Kingsley had been part of their previous visit to the Norwegian settlement. A romance between her and Tall Dog had developed during the journey northward, and when he decided to remain in Skarkavik, it came as no surprise to any of his companions that Betsy stayed there, too. Preacher, Audie, and Nighthawk had lingered long enough to enjoy the wedding feast before heading back to the Rockies.

Audie picked up his cup of mulled wine, took a healthy swallow, and sighed appreciatively.

“We should start soon,” he said. “Just in case we do encounter any inclement weather along the way.”

That was what they had done. After stocking up with supplies from the trading post that they loaded on their pack horses, they had headed northeast, skirting around small mountain ranges and then angling across the vast plains.

In another day or two, they would reach the Sheyenne River and follow it to the Red River, a shallow, silty stream that flowed northward all the way to the vast lake where Axel Gunnarson, Tall Dog’s grandfather, had founded Skarkavik.

This evening, they had camped on a small rise with a stand of brush and trees set back a short distance from the slope. Not expecting to run into any hostiles, they had built a fire and enjoyed their supper.

The surviving warrior and his three companions had interrupted the pleasant interlude after that meal.

“Any more of you skulkin’ around out yonder in the dark?” Preacher asked now as he continued to hold the knife against the Arikara’s throat.

Earlier, he had unbuckled and set aside the gun belt that held twin, holstered Paterson Colt revolvers, a gift to the mountain man from a company of Rangers down in Texas he had met a while back.

If he had been packing those irons when the attack began, he wouldn’t have needed the knife. He’d have just pulled those hoglegs and gone to work, thumbing off shots until all of the renegades had holes blown through them. With the repeating revolvers, he could dispense a whole heap of lead in a hurry.

The prisoner just stared at him defiantly and didn’t answer.

“Nighthawk, maybe you’d best go take a look around,” Preacher said. “If Dog was here, he could scout out any more troublemakers, but who knows where that shaggy ol’ varmint’s gotten off to.”

Dog, the big, wolf-like cur who was one of Preacher’s most steadfast trail companions along with the big gray stallion known as Horse, had wandered off earlier in the evening, bent on hunting prairie chickens or rabbits or whatever else he could scare up for supper.

Nighthawk grunted agreement with Preacher’s suggestion and headed off into the darkness, moving with speed and stealth that were uncanny in such a big man.

“Well,” Preacher said in English to Audie, “I don’t reckon there’s any reason to keep this hombre alive any longer—”

“Wait,” the prisoner said through clenched teeth. With that razor-sharp blade tight against his throat, he had to be careful how much he moved his mouth.

“Oh, so you do understand our lingo,” Preacher said. “I had a hunch maybe you did. If you want to keep breathin’, you’d best speak up and give me a good reason why I don’t just cut your throat and be done with it.”

“You know … Black Angus?”

Preacher frowned and glanced over at Audie, who said, “There’s a breed of cattle in Scotland called the Angus. I believe some varieties are known as black Angus. But they’re not raised in America, as far as I know.”

Carefully, the prisoner continued, “I mean … Black Angus Vicker … My friends and I … are his men … along with others … whites and Indians alike … We follow … the dark trails … together.”

“So you’re outlaws,” Preacher said, “and you belong to a gang led by this fella Vicker. Is that about the size of it?”

“Yes. We were … scouting …”

“Lookin’ for fresh victims, you mean.”

The Arikara warrior just glared at him and didn’t respond to that accusation.

Audie leaned closer and asked, “Were you and your friends expelled from your own tribal bands as I theorized?”

“Our people … are fools. They want to be friends … with the white men. Their lives … will be ruined … and they cannot see it.” The prisoner grimaced. “Take your knife away … so I can spit on … your white man’s civilization!”

“You’re talkin’ to the wrong fella, old son,” Preacher told him. “I ain’t overfond of civilization my own self. But that never made me turn renegade and owlhoot. Now tell me, where’s the rest of this gang of yours?”

The warrior didn’t answer. Preacher increased the pressure on the knife, and a tiny trickle of blood, black in the firelight, ran down the prisoner’s bronzed throat.

It was a question of what would happen first: the warrior’s nerve breaking, or the blade sinking deep enough to sever veins and arteries.

As it turned out, neither of those things happened because at that moment, gunshots crashed somewhere not far off, shattering the late evening hush that hung over the land.

Preacher lifted his head at the unexpected sound, and at that same instant, the prisoner jerked his throat away from the blade and whipped his right arm around to knock the mountain man’s arm aside.

Even though the renegade’s reaction was blindingly fast, Preacher’s was faster. He pressed down quickly enough that the blade left a deep gash as the warrior knocked it away. Blood welled from the wound in his throat.

The injury wasn’t bad enough to stop the man from fighting, at least not right away. He might lose enough blood to weaken him after a few minutes, but right now he threw himself forward in a diving tackle. His arms went around Preacher’s knees and brought the mountain man down.

Preacher would have stabbed the warrior in the back, but when he fell, his right wrist landed at the edge of the campfire. A blazing brand pressed against the back of his wrist caused his fingers to open involuntarily. He jerked his hand away from the fire before it was burned badly, but when he did, the knife slipped out of his grip.

The prisoner shot a clenched fist at Preacher’s groin. Preacher wrenched his hips aside so the vicious blow missed.

The warrior’s weight pinned his lower legs to the ground. Preacher reached down, grabbed the man’s ears, and twisted as hard as he could.

It was a simple move, the kind of thing one kid might do to another while wrestling, but it was effective. The warrior howled in pain and pulled away. Blood dripped from his right ear, where Preacher had torn it half off his head.

Preacher had room to move now. He lifted his right leg and drove his boot heel into the Arikara’s chest, knocking the man backward.

That gave Preacher a moment’s respite, and in those few seconds, he heard more gunfire from the woods.

“Go!” he shouted to Audie. “Help Nighthawk!”

The little man hesitated, but only for a heartbeat. Holding his flintlock rifle with its cut-down barrel at a slant across his chest, he turned and darted into the shadows under the trees.

Preacher sprang up, but the Arikara was already on his feet again, too. Worse, he was between Preacher and the Colts he had set aside earlier. Thankfully, the renegade hadn’t seemed to notice the guns, or he might have made a dive for them.

Instead, with crimson still welling from the wound on his neck, he charged at Preacher.

Preacher met that attack head-on. The two men grappled. Preacher was taller, but the renegade probably weighed about the same as him, and the man’s stocky body was covered with layers of muscle.

And like most Indians, he was an expert at such hand-to-hand combat, having practiced it in mock battles with his friends from a very young age.

Preacher tried to trip up the warrior and throw him aside. For a second, Preacher thought he was going to succeed, but the man recovered quickly. He got his feet set underneath him and grabbed Preacher around the waist. A grunt of effort escaped his lips as he lifted the mountain man off his feet.

Preacher knew what was coming next: the warrior was going to dump him in the fire. Preacher stiffened his hands and brought them down in knife-edge blows that landed where the man’s neck joined his shoulders. That counterattack numbed the warrior momentarily and gave Preacher enough time to drive the heel of his right hand up beneath the man’s chin.

That levered the renegade’s head back sharply and caused his grip to slip. Preacher slammed his other hand against the man’s chest and knocked him back. The warrior let go and Preacher dropped to the ground.

Even though he was off-balance, he swung his right fist in a roundhouse blow that crashed into the Arikara’s face just below the left eye. That drove him sideways a step. Preacher set himself and hooked a left into his belly. That made the renegade bend forward in perfect position for Preacher to hammer another right to the side of his head.

The Arikara dropped to his knees. By now, he had lost enough blood that he was beginning to weaken and get dizzy. Preacher could see it in his eyes.

Something else blazed in the renegade’s eyes: desperation. He hunched his shoulders and tackled Preacher again. But he couldn’t maintain his hold, and Preacher tore away and took a swift step backward.

His foot landed on something hard. When he glanced down, he saw that he had stepped on the handle of one of the tomahawks wielded by the first men who had burst into the camp and tried to kill him and his friends.

The renegade reached out and pawed futilely at Preacher. He gasped and gurgled. More blood gushed from his gashed throat, as if something had broken loose inside him. Maybe it had.

With lightning speed, Preacher bent, snatched the tomahawk from the ground, brought it looping up and then sweeping down.

With an ugly thunk!, the weapon split the renegade’s skull and lodged deep in his brain. Preacher wrenched the tomahawk free and stepped back, and the Arikara warrior pitched forward on his face.

With a wound like that, Preacher knew that checking to make sure the renegade was dead was a waste of time. He stuck the bloody tomahawk behind his belt, stepped past the corpse, grabbed his gun belt from the log where he’d been sitting, and buckled it around his lean hips as he ran into the forest.

The sounds of battle continued in the trees. Even though the thick shadows were probably impenetrable for a normal man’s eyes, Preacher’s exceptionally keen sight allowed him to pick out a path. Even though he moved fast, he didn’t slam into any of the trunks or brain himself on a low-hanging branch.

He hadn’t gone very far before he spotted orange muzzle flashes up ahead.

He filled his hands with the Colts and slowed to a crouching glide as he moved toward the fight. He was able to distinguish the sharp crackle of rifles going off, as well as the dull booming of handguns. At least half a dozen people were involved in this ruckus, he decided.

That meant Audie and Nighthawk would be outnumbered. More than likely, Nighthawk had run into the rest of Black Angus Vicker’s gang while he was taking a look around.

Over the years, Preacher had heard Audie’s specially made rifle go off enough times to recognize the distinctive spitting sound it made. That came from up ahead on his right. The mountain man veered in that direction.

His thumbs rested on the Patersons’ hammers, ready to pull them back and lower the triggers into firing position.

Audie was capable of reloading with swift, practiced ease. Preacher knew that, so he wasn’t surprised when the little man’s rifle barked again less than a minute after the previous shot. Preacher was close enough now to see the tongue of flame that licked out from the muzzle.

That orange glare, even though it lasted less than a second, was also enough for him to spot a figure creeping toward Audie from the side.

Preacher thrust out his right-hand gun, cocking it as he did so. The Colt boomed and bucked in his hand as he fired.

Audie whirled around and exclaimed, “What—”

“One of ’em was slippin’ up on you,” Preacher called. “He ain’t gonna do it no more, though.”

The man Preacher had shot had fallen to the ground and was thrashing around, but that lasted only a few seconds before a death rattle sounded from his throat, and his spasming legs went still.

Preacher ducked behind a tree and pressed his left shoulder against the trunk. Audie was using a tree several feet away for cover.

“Where’s Nighthawk?” Preacher asked.

“I haven’t seen him, but I know he’s out there. A few minutes ago, I heard one of them yelling to warn another that a man as big as a bear was headed his way.”

Despite the grimness of the situation, Audie chuckled and went on, “A moment later, I heard a great thrashing in the brush and knew that Nighthawk had gotten his hands on one of the enemy.”

“This is Vicker’s bunch we’re fightin’, don’t you reckon?”

“I’d say it has to be.” Audie paused. “The man you were battling when I left …?”

“He ain’t gonna trouble us again.”

“A conclusion devoutly to be wished for all his compatriots.”

Audie had his rifle reloaded. He snapped it to his shoulder as a shot blasted, and a slug chewed splinters from the trunk above his head. Audie fired back at the muzzle flash.

“I hate fighting in the shadows like this,” he said as he reached for his powder horn. “You can’t see if you’ve done any good.”

“That’s all right,” Preacher said. “We’ll know we’ve done killed ’em all when they stop shootin’ at us.”

Preacher heard a branch snap and a man curse to his left. The man sounded upset about giving his presence away, and he had good reason to feel that way.

Swiftly, Preacher wheeled in that direction and triggered both Colts. He was confident he wasn’t shooting at Nighthawk. The huge Crow warrior never did much actual talking, and when he did, like most Indians, he wasn’t prone to cussing.

No return fire came from the man Preacher had targeted. Even in bad light like this, the mountain man had an uncanny ability to hit what he shot at.

From somewhere in the forest ahead of them, a deep, gravelly voice shouted, “Come on! They can’t kill all of us! Get the dirty sons of—”

The rest of the profane command was lost in full-throated bellows of rage from several other men as they responded to their leader’s urging. The racket in the brush suddenly increased as attackers charged through it.

Preacher had seven rounds left in the Patersons, all told. He stepped into the open, leveled the revolv. . .