Pride Of The Mountain Man

Book 22: Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

The Taste Of Blood. . .And Fear It's a simple job for Smoke Jensen: drive a herd of longhorns to the backwater railhead of Dodge City. When he arrives there, Smoke finds a town in the grip of terror, its only lawman, Wyatt Earp, outgunned by a cutthroat gang forty strong. The rampage of bank robberies, looting, and cold-blooded murder stirs Smoke's instinct for survival, and his desire for justice. But to take the law's side means braving the West's most notorious outlaw. . . His name is ""Bloody Bill"" Anderson, a Confederate guerilla whose violent career as a gunhawk has earned the fearless desperado a deadly reputation. Now he's found his match in the Mountain Man-and choking on the muzzle of Smoke's twin Colts is only the beginning of an all-out war that'll turn one lawless town into a legend. . .

Release date: June 5, 2018

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 221

Sample

Bill Anderson picked a piece of stringy beef from between his yellowed, broken teeth with the tip of a bowie knife. He sat by a fire on the Kansas Territory prairie, surrounded by his men. These were not ordinary men: travelers, cowhands, or drummers in search of a buyer for their wares. In flickering firelight from a shallow pit dug into flinty soil between endless miles of rolling hills, twenty-nine hard faces watched Anderson as he laid out his plans for a forthcoming raid. These same men had been with him since the end of the war, trusted members of a gang he selected with care, with a purpose. After the collapse of the Confederacy and Lee’s surrender at Gettysburg, remnants of a band known across the middle of America as Quantrill’s Raiders were left without a cause, without an excuse or a reason for their black deeds, other than simple greed and bloodlust. Bill Anderson had become widely known as “Bloody Bill” for his penchant to draw blood from victims, even those who were utterly defenseless. A trail of bodies marked Bloody Bill Anderson’s passage across the states of Missouri and southern Illinois, and territories such as Kansas and Nebraska. Looting, robbing, and taking a terrible toll in human lives, the remaining members of Quantrill’s Raiders roamed free as they had during the war, taking whatever they wanted by violence long after the Confederate States of America had ceased to exist, running from the law now and then, a small force of United States Marshals charged with policing vast, empty stretches of the western frontier.

“There’s two banks in Dodge City,” Bill said, his thick voice commanding the full attention of those around him. “Both’re full of cattlemen’s money, accordin’ to what I’ve heard. We hit ’em both, hard an’ fast, right after they open. Divide up in two parties. Kill every sumbitch we see ridin’ in, so folks don’t get no crazy ideas ‘bout shootin’ back if they’s got guns. They’ve got ‘em a young City Marshal. Last name’s Earp. He’s got two or three part-time deputies, mostly farm boys who won’t know which end of a gun shoots lead. We strike fast an’ hard. Make examples out of them that tries to fight back. Gun ‘em down like ducks comin’ off a pond... turn them dirt streets red an’ we won’t have no trouble to speak of.”

“I hear Dodge can be a tough town, Bill,” a voice said from a dark spot beyond the circle of firelight. “Maybe you hadn’t oughta figure it’ll be that easy.”

Bill’s pale gray eyes searched for the owner of the voice among the faces he could see. “There ain’t no room in this here outfit for a man who ain’t got backbone.” Anderson stood up slowly, his gaunt, six-foot frame outlined by what was left of his Confederate uniform, a pair of low-slung pistols tied around his slender waist. “Was that you, Curly? You the one who said that?”

Men backed out of the way until Bill could see Curly Boyd standing by himself at the rear of the group. Curly was from Missouri, a seasoned veteran of dozens of raids despite his youth and poor eyesight requiring spectacles.

“All I said was, it might not be so easy,” Curly replied to Bill’s question, sensing the danger he’d put himself in with a casual remark.

Bill’s lips drew back across his teeth, a twisted grin with no mirth behind it. “You done turned yellow-dog on us, Curly. I got no use for a damn coward. . .” As he spoke, Bill drew one Colt .44 with characteristic speed, a quickness that put fear in the hearts of brave men. “You ain’t left me no choice, Curly. I gotta make an example outa you.” He aimed for Boyd’s head, and for a brief moment some members of the gang wondered if this were only a ploy Would Bloody Bill actually shoot a member of his own gang?

“You ain’t . . . gonna ... shoot me, Bill?” Curly stammered as the click of a pistol hammer ended a few seconds of silence. “We been together since the war . . .”

The explosion of a .44 slug ripped through the night quiet, Bloody Bill’s only answer to Curly Boyd’s question.

Curly’s head snapped back. The right lens in his wire-rimmed spectacles shattered. His hat flew off, swirling into the night as the force of impact made him stagger backward. Those who were standing close to Curly saw a plug of his curly black hair erupt from the rear of his skull, spiraling like a child’s top toward the ground. A spray of dark crimson blood followed the twist of hair and bone fragments away from the back of his head, squirting across his sagging shoulders, running down the back of his shirt, falling like red rain on flinty soil behind him.

“Jesus, Bill,” someone muttered softly.

Curly’s knees buckled. He sank to the ground as though he meant to pray, blood pumping from the back of his skull, pieces of glass still clinging to the wire loop in front of his right eye socket. Curly remained on his knees a moment, staring up at Bill with his one remaining eyeball.

“How come you got to shoot Curly like that, Bill?” another voice asked from across the fire. “All he said was, Dodge had a real bad reputation as a tough town . . .”

Bill ignored Curly to glance across at the speaker, a tall, whipcord-thin gunman named Tom Hicks, a former artilleryman from Boonesboro, Tennessee.

Bill fired point-blank into Tom’s open mouth. The crack of lead striking teeth sounded like snapping green kindling wood in the fleeting aftermath of Anderson’s blasting pistol shot.

Hicks fell over on his back, feet kicking, reaching for his mouth with both hands.

“Son of a bitch!” a husky voice said. “Lookee there! Tom’s front teeth come plumb out the back of his neck. Two of ‘em’s layin’ there underneath his skullbone. Look, Shorty! Them’s two of Tom’s busted teeth, sure as snuff makes spit.”

“I see ’em,” a stocky gunman replied, standing a few feet from Hicks. “I reckon he shoulda kept his mouth shut.”

The acrid scent of gunsmoke swept across the firepit, a blue cloud carried away by the wind.

“Any more of you sons of bitches got anythin’ to say?” Bill asked, sweeping the assembled men with an icy stare. “We’s gonna rob them Dodge City banks just like I said. Any man in this here bunch who wants out can saddle his horse an’ ride, or he can say what’s on his mind an’ wind up like Curly an’ Tom.”

Curly Boyd fell over on his face, groaning once. His boots began to shake with death throes. Everyone could see a large hole in the rear of his head where a tiny fountain of blood was spurting forth in regular bursts, keeping time with the slowing beat of his heart.

Across the fire, Tom Hicks made soft choking sounds as blood filled his neck and lungs. The rest of the gang stood silently, looking from one dying man to the other.

“I ain’t heard nobody else complainin’,” Bill said, with a final glare passing across faces illuminated by the fire’s yellow glow. “Dodge City,” he said again, almost a challenge. “We’re gonna empty them vaults. Kill a bunch of folks, so everybody’ll remember not to tangle with Bill Anderson an’ his boys. We’ll show ’em.”

“We could hang that City Marshal. String him up by his neck to a tree some place so people in these parts’ll know we ain’t just foolin’ around,” said a gunman with heavy black beard stubble hitching his thumbs in his gun belt.

Bill nodded. “We’ll put folks in this Territory on notice we mean business. I like your idea, Roy. Well hang that Earp feller right on Main Street.”

“Sounds good to me,” a kid by the name of Carruthers said as Tom Hicks began whimpering softly.

“We could burn down some of the town,” another said from a spot near Curly Boyd.

“It’d make a pretty fare,” a gunslick from Missouri by the name of Sammy McCoy announced, his smile easy to see since he stood close to the fire. “Light up half the damn sky in Kansas Territory.”

“A fire sounds good to me,” Bill replied, holstering his Colt when it became clear that no one else would challenge him. “It would be a reminder to them Kansas farmers an’ cattlemen who come up from Texas that we ain’t just foolin’ around.”

“I like fires,” Sammy said, grinning. He had eyes that were badly crossed, so it appeared he was continuously staring at the end of his nose. “We could burn the whole damn place plumb to the ground.”

“Shut up, Sammy,” his brother Claude said. “Every man in this outfit knows you ain’t right in the head. Shut up so’s we can listen to Bill.”

“Them banks are gonna be stuffed plumb full of money this time of year,” Bill said. “Cattle buyers are havin’ money sent so they can buy herds early in the spring. This one’s gonna make us rich, boys.”

Tom Hicks called out for his mother in a blood-and phlegm-choked voice. “Help me, Momma! Please help me! It hurts so bad, Momma!”

Heads turned toward the dying man’s prone form.

“Somebody shut him up,” Bill snapped. “I’m tired of hearin’ him complain.”

“How we gonna do that?” Sammy asked. “How we gonna shut him up when he’s damn near dead anyways?”

“Smother him with your saddle blanket,” Claude replied in a dry, emotionless voice, “or find a big rock an’ put it in his mouth so he can’t say nothin’.”

“But he ain’t got no teeth in front, Claudie,” Sammy said. “How the hell’s a rock gonna stay there?”

“Why don’t both of you shut up?” a booming voice said from the shadows beyond the fire.

Faces turned toward the speaker . . . everyone knew the sound of Jack Starr’s voice. Starr was a remorseless killer, a man who took pride in the number of victims he had claimed over a lifetime.

Starr ambled over to Tom Hicks. “I’ll take care of it,” he said, pulling a Dance Colt conversion from a cross-pull holster tied to his waist.

He cocked his pistol, aiming down for Tom’s forehead. “He never did have no gumption,” Starr said. “Now he’s layin’ here cryin’ for his mama like a sugar-tit baby.” Starr fired, and the explosion echoed from the silent prairie around them.

Tom’s body stiffened. Bill Anderson grinned when he saw Tom’s muscles contract, then relax. A final, bubbling breath of air escaped Tom’s bloody mouth, then he went still.

“Nice shootin’, Jack,” Bill said, still smiling, “only it ain’t gonna win you no prize money on account of you was standin’ so close.”

“Got tired of listenin’ to him,” Starr replied, glancing across the fire at Curly Boyd. “If Curly makes one more noise I’m gonna do the same to him.”

“Curly wasn’t no bad feller,” Sammy offered. “He just had trouble seein’ things on account of them spectacles.”

“He turned yellow on us,” Bill snarled, reading the faces he could see in the firelight. “Any sumbitch who turns yellow on me is gonna die just like these two.”

Boyd had the misfortune to groan right then, putting a deep scowl on Jack Starr’s face. Starr walked around the firepit with his pistol dangling from his fist.

“Are you gonna shoot Curly, too?” Sammy asked, like he couldn’t quite believe it.

Starr looked over his shoulder. “I’m gonna shoot him, an’ you besides, if you don’t shut up, Sammy,” he said, cocking his Dance again. “How the hell are we gonna sleep tonight with them two makin’ all that noise?”

Sammy fell silent. Starr aimed down at the back of Boyd’s head and calmly pulled the trigger.

As the noise from the gunshot faded, Bill Anderson addressed his men. “Get some sleep, boys. Come the next week or so we’re gonna rob us a couple of banks an’ spill a little blood. I want everybody rested. Let’s turn in . . .”

Smoke Jensen took his wife in his arms. “I love you, Sally. We won’t be gone long, maybe four or five weeks. These Hereford crosses don’t trail as well as a longhorn. It’s those short legs that slow ’em down. Dodge City ain’t all that far, and it’s the closest place to sell these crossbreeds to eastern cattle buyers. Let’s just hope short legs won’t keep us from makin’ it that far.”

Sally smiled up at his rugged face in the glow of an early morning sunrise peeking across the mountains. “Those short legs carry more beef,” she said, an undeniable fact. Crossing their longhorn cows with Hereford bulls had been her idea. “I told you so.”

“Can’t remember a time when you didn’t claim to be right,” he said, grinning into her beautiful eyes, seeing his reflection in them as if they were liquid pools.

“I am always right,” she said, widening her smile.

He cast a glance down at the meadow where more than three hundred long-yearling steers, fattened and ready for market, grazed peacefully under Pearlie’s watchful eye while Cal saddled a young horse at the barn. An early fall had painted the grasses with frost, and as the sun rose, a silvery mist lifted from the meadow. “Right pretty sight, ain’t it?” he asked, reluctant to let go of the woman he loved, the woman who had changed his life so dramatically from a gunfighter to a peaceful rancher high in the Rockies, helping him build a ranch they had named Sugarloaf.

“It is a pretty sight,” she told him quietly. “Just make sure you get back here in one piece to see it with me for the rest of our lives.”

“Can’t hardly see how there’d be any trouble. Nothin’ much between the Dodge City railheads and here besides open country and a few hills.”

“You seem to have a knack for findin’ trouble almost any place,” Sally reminded him, her smile fading, worry replacing it in her face.

“That was before, when my past wouldn’t leave us alone. I figure all that’s over now.”

Doubt lingered in Sally’s eyes. “Promise me you’ll avoid it, Smoke. I worry every time you’re away.”

“Then stop worryin’ this time, woman,” he said, a mock note of reproach in his voice. “This is gonna be the most peaceful cattle drive in history. That’s why I’m only takin’ Pearlie and Cal along, ’cause we’ve only got three hundred steers to worry about, and it’s empty country. I’m leavin’ Johnny to help you keep an eye on the place while we’re gone, an’ to lend a hand with chores.”

“Just promise me you’ll swing wide of trouble,” she said again.

He gazed down at her lovingly. “You’ve got my word on it, Sally.”

A ruckus at the barn distracted them. Cal, too young to fully understand the nature of a green horse on a chilly morning by noticing a hump in its back, swung his leg over the saddle cinched to the back of a bay three-year-old colt. The bay gave a snort and downed its head, beginning to buck as hard as it knew how away from the barns and corrals.

Cal wasn’t ready for the suddenness of it, his reins held too loosely to pull the colt’s head up. All he could do was hold on to the saddle horn for all he was worth while letting out a yelp like a scalded puppy, trying to fit his right boot in a free-swinging stirrup to help him keep his balance.

Rocking back and forth, losing his hat, his face as white as winter snow, Cal tried desperately to hang on as the bay sunfished and crow-hopped, lunging several feet into the air to rid its back of an unwanted load.

A roar of laughter echoed from the meadow when Pearlie saw Cal’s dilemma. “Ride ’em, cowboy!” Pearlie. cried between spasms of laughter, suddenly gripping his sides.

Cal managed to survive eight or nine jumps aboard the colt’s back before he went sailing over the bay’s head, his arms outstretched to break his fall in the frost-laden grass.

“Lookee yonder!” Pearlie exclaimed, pointing to Cal’s quick departure from the saddle. “I’d nearly swear that boy’s done gone an’ sprouted hisself a pair of wings!” He broke into another fit of heehaws.

Cal landed on his chest with a grunt, skidding along on the slippery grass, looking about as helpless as a newborn lamb until he slid to a stop, sprawled flat on his face.

Sally stifled a giggle. “I hope he’s okay, Smoke.”

“He’s fine. That grass is near ’bout as soft as a feather mattress. It’ll teach him a thing or two.”

Cal raised his head, noticing that Smoke and Sally were watching from the porch of the ranch house. And he couldn’t help but hear Pearlie’s endless laughing from a spot near the edge of the herd.

Cal spat out a mouthful of frosted grass. His face was red with embarrassment. He spoke to Smoke. “Sorry, boss. I reckon I pulled that cinch too tight first thing this mornin’ on a half-broke bronc.”

“It wasn’t the colt’s fault, son,” Smoke said, trying to contain his own chuckle. “He gave you every warnin’ he’s got. There was a hump in his back a mile high. One of these days you’re gonna learn to notice these things.”

Cal pushed himself up to his hands and knees, giving Pearlie a scowl downslope for continuing to laugh. “It ain’t all that damn tunny!” he shouted, until he remembered Sally was there. He gave her a bow of apology. “Sorry for the language, Miz Jensen, but Pearlie hadn’t oughta laugh so hard at a man’s difficulties on a cold mornin’ like this.”

The colt, a gentle-natured animal, stopped bucking to look down at Cal. Most good young horses resisted being broken to a saddle and bridle right at first, a way of showing they were bred with spirit.

Pearlie let out a final guffaw and then pointed to the bay. “See yonder, Cal? That colt’s plumb ready to apologize for what he done, turnin’ you into a sparrow on the fly when you’s all dressed up to be a cowhand. He’s sayin’ he’s sorry by the way he’s holdin’ his head down like that. Why, it even looks like he’s got tears in his eyes.”

Cal stood up angrily to retrieve his fallen hat. “If Miz Jensen wasn’t listenin’ I’d give you a piece of my mind, Pearlie. No need to poke so much fun at an honest mistake.”

“Mistakes can git a man killed,” Pearlie said seriously. “That young horse is tryin’ to teach you a few things about how to stay alive.”

“I’m afraid Pearlie’s right,” Smoke said, watching Cal dust off his Stetson before approaching the colt to grab its loose reins. “A man who wants to stay aboveground in this wild part of the country had better learn to look for the little things, the warnings nature and animals give you. That colt was tellin’ you plain as day he wasn’t ready for a rider. I’ve shown you how to lead a young horse off a few steps firsthand, so it gets used to the feel of a cinch. Some of ’em will crow-hop a time or two, just to let you know they ain’t happy about the idea of carryin’ a rider.”

“I remember you showin’ me that, boss. I reckon I plumb forgot this morning’.”

Smoke watched Cal lead the bay away from the barn, and to the boy’s credit he was paying close attention to the colt’s back.

He turned back to Sally and bent down to kiss her gently. “You know I’ll miss you,” he admitted, before he released her from his embrace.

“I’ll miss you too, Smoke. Please remember what I said. If you can, let other men settle their own disputes.”

“I’ll do it,” he promised, starting down the porch steps to mount his Palouse stud, “just so long as they don’t wind up involvin’ me or my friends or these Hereford yearlings. We’ve worked hard for two years to get this breedin’ program started and this’ll be our first crop to sell. I’ve got a good feelin’ about it . . . that we’re gonna be makin’ some money on these calves.”

He stepped aboard the stud and reined toward the meadow with frosty breath curling from his nose and mouth when he turned in the saddle to say, “Goodbye, Sally. If you need anything, send Johnny to town, and Louis Longmont will do whatever’s necessary to see that you get it, includin’ helpin’ if anybody shows up who don’t belong.”

Sally nodded. “We can take care of ourselves out here, in case you haven’t noticed before. But if I need anything I’ll send for Louis.”

Smoke knew it was more than just an empty statement to make him feel better. Sally was every bit as good with . . .