Preachers inferno, p.1
Preacher's Inferno, page 1
Look for these exciting Western series from
bestselling authors
WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE
and J. A. JOHNSTONE
Smoke Jensen: The Last Mountain Man
Preacher: The First Mountain Man
Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter
Those Jensen Boys!
The Jensen Brand
MacCallister
The Red Ryan Westerns
Perley Gates
Have Brides, Will Travel
Will Tanner: U.S. Deputy Marshal
Shotgun Johnny
The Chuckwagon Trail
The Jackals
The Slash and Pecos Westerns
The Texas Moonshiners
Stoneface Finnegan Westerns
Ben Savage: Saloon Ranger
The Buck Trammel Westerns
The Death and Texas Westerns
The Hunter Buchanon Westerns
AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS
THE FIRST MOUNTAIN MAN
PREACHERS INFERNO
WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE
AND J.A. JOHNSTONE
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
Teaser chapter
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
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119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2022 by J. A. Johnstone
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-4878-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4879-3 (eBook)
THE JENSEN FAMILY
FIRST FAMILY OF THE AMERICAN FRONTIER
Smoke Jensen—The Mountain Man.
The youngest of three children and orphaned as a young boy, Smoke Jensen is considered one of the fastest draws in the West. His quest to tame the lawless West has become the stuff of legend. Smoke owns the Sugarloaf Ranch in Colorado. Married to Sally Jensen, father to Denise “Denny,” and Louis.
Preacher—The First Mountain Man.
Though not a blood relative, grizzled frontiersman Preacher became a father figure to the young Smoke Jensen, teaching him how to survive in the brutal, often deadly Rocky Mountains. Preacher fought the battles that forged his destiny. Armed with a long gun, he is as fierce as the land itself.
Matt Jensen—The Last Mountain Man.
Orphaned but taken in by Smoke Jensen, Matt Jensen has become like a younger brother to Smoke, and even took the Jensen name. And like Smoke, Matt has carved out his destiny on the American frontier. He lives by the gun and surrenders to no man.
Luke Jensen—Bounty Hunter.
Mountain Man Smoke Jensen’s long-lost brother, Luke Jensen is scarred by war and a dead shot—the right skills to be a bounty hunter. And he’s cunning and fierce enough to bring down the deadliest outlaws of his day.
Ace Jensen and Chance Jensen—Those Jensen Boys!
The untold story of Smoke Jensen’s long-lost nephews, Ace and Chance, a pair of young-gun twins as reckless and wild as the frontier itself . . . Their father is Luke Jensen, thought killed in the Civil War. Their uncle Smoke Jensen is one of the fiercest gunfighters the West has ever known. It’s no surprise that the inseparable Ace and Chance Jensen have a knack for taking risks—even if they have to blast their way out of them.
Denise “Denny” Jensen, and Louis Jensen—The Jensen Brand.
Denny and Louis are the adult children of Smoke and Sally Jensen. Denny is the wildcard tomboy, kept in line by the more level-headed Louis. The twins grew up mostly abroad, but never lost their love of the Sugarloaf Ranch, or lost sight of what it means to be a Jensen.
CHAPTER 1
For the moment, Preacher lay on his stomach in the brush without moving. That steady-as-a-rock motionlessness was the way he always prepared himself for a kill shot. He breathed slow and easy and stayed focused on his quarry. On this hillside looking down, he was just one more predator in the foothills of the Gros Ventre Range.
Gros Ventre was what the French called the Atsina Indians who lived in this region with the Shoshone, Crow, Bannock, and Blackfeet. French explorers had gotten the name wrong in the translation of the sign language they shared. The translation from French to English was big belly. Or maybe the French mapmakers had chosen the name deliberately because the Grand Tetons, north and west of the Gros Ventre Range, called Les Trois Têtons, translated into “the three nipples.” And seeing them, especially from a distance, certainly brought those womanly attributes to a man’s mind.
A small group of pronghorns fed among a copse of pine trees farther down the slope. The trees stood mostly straight and tall, angled back toward the foothills so the tips would find the morning sun, and they were dense enough that if a man didn’t know what to look for, or how to look for it, he might miss the pronghorns grazing in the trees.
The spring and early summer had been good to the pronghorns. Water was still plentiful, and the grass was green and thick. In the winter, when the snow came, things wouldn’t be so fine for them. The numbers they’d built up during the good months would work against them then. If herds carried too many members, they’d run the risk of starving when grass got hard to come by.
But for now, they were sleek and sassy and had plenty of meat on them. Pronghorn didn’t think much past the here and now of things. A man who could hunt could eat well off a herd like that, and Preacher was one of the finest hunters to ever walk the mountains.
With their heads held high and proud, their round eyes watchful, and their ears pricked, the pronghorn bucks circled the herd, kept the does and the young clustered, and remained wary to potential threats. They kept their eyes moving and flicked their ears to track even the smallest sounds.
A small flock of white trumpeter swans flew over the trees, probably headed for the nearby Snake River. The adults had six-foot wingspans and made a lot of noise in passing. The pronghorns shied a little at the racket, and Preacher worried he was going to miss his opportunity if the herd bolted. The swans continued on their way, though, and after a moment, the pronghorns returned to grazing.
All their coats, brown from neck to hindquarters and white bellies and haunches, shined in the dappled sunlight that slid through the gently waving branches. The bucks had tall, thick antlers that hooked on the ends.
A man on foot without a firearm would have a hard time handling a lone pronghorn. The bucks weighed more than a hundred pounds, and a few of them looked like they’d go as much as a hundred and fifty pounds. And there wasn’t much quit in one of them when defending the herd.
Watching the beautiful creatures made Preacher’s heart sing, though he wouldn’t have told many people that, and never anyone who wasn’t a mountain man like him. Only a true man who made his life under the wide-open sky could have understood what stirred his soul while he studied the pronghorns.
It wasn’t just the prospect of good meat that put a smile on Preacher’s rugged, bearded face. Mostly, he was just grateful to be back home in the mountains. It was where he belonged, and of late he’d been traipsing far from his customary neck of the woods. His travels had taken him away from t
He studied the herd like a man reading a menu in a fancy restaurant in New Orleans. He wanted a buck that was strong and healthy, one that had plenty of meat on it.
The mountain man wasn’t planning on just eating good himself today. He was going to pack out meat to friends that he was looking forward to seeing again. When visiting, he wasn’t a man to come to the table empty-handed. By this time tomorrow, he planned on being at the mountain man rendezvous near Jackson’s Hole.
Anticipation filled him at the thought of seeing old acquaintances. He hadn’t seen some of them in years, and he was sure there would be sad news of those who had died during the time he’d been gone. A mountain man’s life was hard and filled with the dangers of Indians, bears, snakes, catamounts, bad falls, and loose rock during the spring melts.
And that was if the winter didn’t take a man with the freezing cold or sickness. He hadn’t been to a rendezvous yet where someone hadn’t been lost to one thing or another.
Lord help him, Preacher looked forward to being back in the mountains for winter with snowdrifts so high they covered anything that would have looked fetching to a civilized person.
He liked seeing new things every now and again, which was one of the reasons he enjoyed his trips to St. Louis to sell his furs. He got to see some of that burgeoning civilization that was casting greedy eyes out West. He usually didn’t like what he saw, all those people planning on rolling on west to the Pacific Coast and the free land there. He’d taken note of the goings-on so he could be wary of those people, most of them with their own agendas, and he’d realized again why he loved the mountains so.
While he was in St. Louis, he could sit in Red Mike’s and meet with other men like himself who lived by their wits, the strength of their backs, and the keenness of their eyes. They could swap lies in fun and jest, and they could tell stories about the things they’d seen and done that might interest a curious man or a fiddlefooted one.
Preacher knew himself to be guilty on both counts.
Those stories that got exchanged, though, were important because they painted oral maps of places, people, and things a mountain man would find useful while exploring new places. Or even places he hadn’t visited in a while.
Things were changing in the mountains and it was all Preacher could do to keep up with it.
St. Louis was a hardscrabble city that was showing growth pains, and Preacher’s latest trip there, after a nasty bit of business, had taken him south along the great river. New Orleans had proven cold, secretive, and downright deceitful if Preacher had to be blunt about it. He’d sailed as a prisoner on a pirate ship before making his escape and arranging his return to the city to wreak vengeance on those who had wronged him.
Even Texas and Nuevo Mexico, which he’d only just returned from, were getting too neighborly with civilized ways, and a large slice of treachery. At least out in the mountains a man knew mostly what he could expect from others whose trails crossed his own. Most folks, peaceable and those who would take advantage of others, stayed out of the high country. Places down south were a confluence of opposing forces that changed sides quickly.
Preacher had longed for the mountains and the solitude.
“Lord, I have missed this place,” Preacher whispered out loud and surprised himself. As a hunter, he knew better than to go talking to himself while he was hunting.
The pronghorns continued their grazing, never knowing he was only a short distance away.
Dog shifted a little next to the mountain man. The big cur looked like a gray wolf and had often been mistaken for one. His wise eyes were focused solely on the pronghorns. His pink tongue lolled, and his ears twitched. He shifted his attention to Preacher and whined a little.
“Easy, boy,” Preacher said softly to his trail companion. “I can taste them steaks, too. We’ll have all we want right shortly.”
Deftly, Preacher eased up his rifle from his side, pulled the butt to his shoulder all while keeping the barrel low in the grass and making no disturbance. He laid his sights over a proud buck eighty yards away.
The pronghorn was full grown, muscular, and wary. The shot would be an easy one to make even at the distance, but Preacher wanted to be sure of the kill. Tracking a wounded animal would be simple enough for him even in the ragged tree line that ran though the foothills, but he didn’t want the pronghorn to suffer.
Preacher aimed a few inches behind the buck’s front leg, where the heart would be, and gently eared back the rifle’s hammer. The click of the flintlock didn’t travel far, and the distance would put the sound late to the pronghorns’ ears if it did reach them because he didn’t plan on wasting any time.
Totally focused, Preacher slid his finger over the trigger, let out half a breath, and squeezed the trigger just as the pronghorn’s head came up sharply and its ears flicked toward the mountain man.
The rifle bucked against Preacher’s shoulder. The ball caught the pronghorn right where he’d aimed, and the buck stutter-stepped and went down in a loose sprawl on the other side of the spreading, gray cloud of powder smoke unleashed by the rifle.
With the sharp report of the rifle echoing around them, the pronghorn herd broke cover and ran for the high and uncut in a rippling, bounding mass. The other bucks circled them and headed them to safety farther down the foothills.
When Preacher thought about the way the pronghorn buck had gazed in his direction, an uneasy feeling touched him. He was certain any sound he might have made had gone unheard—until he’d fired the rifle.
That meant the buck had seen something that caught his attention, and that something was behind Preacher. An itch dawned between Preacher’s shoulder blades, and he recognized that feeling.
He wasn’t alone on the hillside.
Dog growled and his hackles grew stiff. His big, wedge-shaped head swung to the left, away from Preacher. At the same time, the rustle of someone moving in the brush in that direction reached Preacher’s ears.
“You ain’t been payin’ proper attention, old son,” Preacher said to himself.
Despite his focus on the pronghorns, the mountain man knew he wasn’t an easy individual to sneak up on. Whoever was out there was good. Dog hadn’t marked them, either, and the big cur was canny in the mountains.
Preacher let the rifle lay because he had no time to reload it. He reached for one of the flintlock pistols he carried tucked into his belt at his back. By the time he worked the weapon free, Dog nipped his arm hard enough to pinch even through Preacher’s buckskin shirt sleeve.
Taking the big cur’s warning, the mountain man rolled to his left, and Dog darted through the brush on his belly and stayed low. Two arrows fletched with turkey feathers thudded into the ground where Preacher had been. Judging from the angle, they’d come from farther up in the foothills. Preacher had approached downwind of the pronghorns, so he hadn’t smelled whoever was hunting him because whoever it was had been downwind from him.
Another arrow cut the air over the mountain man’s head.
On his back a few feet from his original position but still somewhat covered by brush, Preacher looked farther up the foothills and spotted movement. At least three Indians converged on the mountain man’s position from sixty feet away. All of them wore paint and buckskins that allowed them to blend somewhat with the trees around them.
When they saw that he was aware of them, they discarded any notion of slipping up on him quiet-like and came faster down the slope. They stayed behind cover where they could find it, and there was plenty of it.
Preacher rolled to his feet and came up with the pistol in his hand. He cocked the weapon and aimed at the closest warrior, then squeezed the trigger as the man darted out from behind a tree. Packed with a double-shotted load, two .45-caliber balls instead of one, the pistol kicked in Preacher’s hand and powder smoke obscured the tree line.
Struck by the pistol balls, his chest bleeding from two wounds that stained his buckskin shirt, the warrior cried out in pain and dropped in mid-run.
Preacher thought the Indians were probably Blackfoot warriors. Those bands traipsed through the mountains, too, and attacked wagon trains headed toward the Pacific coastline. They considered mountain men to be their mortal enemies . . . and they had a deep and abiding hatred for the one called Preacher.
