Fort buzzard, p.1
Fort Buzzard, page 1
LOOK FOR THESE EXCITING WESTERN SERIES FROM BESTSELLING AUTHORS WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE AND J. A. JOHNSTONE
The Mountain Man
Luke Jensen: Bounty Hunter
Brannigan’s Land
The Jensen Brand
Smoke Jensen: The Early Years
Preacher and MacCallister
Fort Misery
The Fighting O’Neils
Perley Gates
MacCoole and Boone
Guns of the Vigilantes
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
Will Tanner, U.S. Deputy Marshal
Old Cowboys Never Die
Go West, Young Man
Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.
FORT BUZZARD
Preacher & MacCallister series
WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE AND J.A. JOHNSTONE
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
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
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
Teaser chapter
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2024 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 authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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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: 978-0-7860-5073-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-5073-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-5074-1 (eBook)
CHAPTER 1
Preacher darted aside as the club swept down toward his head.
Instead of cracking his skull, as the attacker intended, it just brushed Preacher’s right shoulder. The mountain man turned his leap into a spin as he used his left hand to jerk the tomahawk from behind his belt.
He whipped the deadly weapon at the man who had jumped him from the mouth of the dark alley he was passing. Preacher had gone past plenty of dark alleys in his adventurous life and knew to be alert.
Once again, that instinctive caution probably had saved his life.
Quick reflexes saved the attacker’s life, at least for the moment. He yelped and threw himself backward so that Preacher’s tomahawk missed his face by bare inches.
That had to be a terrifying sensation, to have death whisper by so closely. The man recovered from his missed blow and flailed at Preacher again with the club.
Preacher blocked the blow with the tomahawk. The impact shivered up his arm as the two wooden shafts collided.
He wore two holstered Colt Dragoon revolvers and could have used his right hand to draw the one on that hip. At this range, a round from the heavy gun would blow a fist-sized, .44 caliber hole right through the varmint who’d tried to stove in his head.
But such an outcome, satisfying though it might be, wouldn’t tell Preacher whether the man just intended to murder and rob him or if he had something more nefarious in mind.
His swipe with the tomahawk had been an instinctive reaction, but now that he’d had a second to think about it, Preacher wanted to ask the attacker some questions. That meant capturing him alive.
He twisted the wrist of the hand that held the tomahawk, a move that caught the club in a bind and wrenched it right out of the other man’s hand. Preacher stepped closer and swung his right fist in a solid blow that landed on the assailant’s jaw and sounded like an ax splitting a chunk of wood.
The man’s head jerked to the side and his knees buckled. He started to pitch forward. Preacher caught him by the shirtfront, bunching his fingers in the linsey-woolsey, and jerked him upright again.
“Don’t pass out on me,” Preacher said as he held the man up and brandished the tomahawk in front of his bleary eyes. “If you can’t answer my questions, there won’t be no reason for me not to split your skull wide open.”
The man’s head lolled back and forth as Preacher shook him. He said, “D-don’t . . . don’t kill me . . . Please . . . I’m sorry . . . They paid me . . . paid me to . . .”
“Well, they sure wasted their money,” Preacher said as the man’s voice trailed off. He gave the fellow another shake. “Who paid you?”
“Blake . . . Blakemore. Seth . . . Blakemore.”
Preacher grunted. “Yeah, that’s what I figured. He must’ve got word that I was on his trail. Were you supposed to meet him after you ambushed me?”
“Y-yeah. At Dillard’s . . . Dillard’s Tavern.”
Preacher had heard of the place but had never been there since it hadn’t been in business the last time he’d visited Leavenworth, Kansas, just down the Missouri River from the military outpost of the same name.
Dillard’s Tavern had a bad reputation and was known to be where the brigands who preyed on the wagon trains heading west spent their time when they were in town.
Preacher wasn’t surprised at all to hear that Seth Blakemore intended to rendezvous there with his hired assassin. Blakemore was rumored to be the leader of one of those gangs. Preacher had been hired to track him down and find out if he was responsible for an attack that had left a dozen innocent immigrants dead. Some of the survivors had banded together and sought out the mountain man to ask for his help in avenging their slain loved ones.
Preacher probably would have taken on the task simply because he hated outlaws, but when the folks had offered to pay his expenses, he had agreed. That would make them feel as if they were contributing to the effort.
“Wha . . . what’re you gonna do . . . to me?” the man asked. “I . . . I’m sorry I came after you. I was just so scared of Blakemore, I didn’t think I could tell him no—”
“I ought to plant this tomahawk right in that rotten gourd you call a brain,” Preacher interrupted him. “But I reckon I won’t. Can’t have you scurryin’ back to Blakemore and warnin’ him I’m comin’, though—”
“I won’t do that, I swear I won’t! I won’t say anything if you’ll just let me go.”
“Can’t risk it,” Preacher said. He drew back the ’hawk so that he could slam the flat of it against the man’s head and knock him out for a spell. He would tie the man hand and foot and leave him in the alley.
Somebody else might come along, cut his throat for him, and rifle his pockets, but that wouldn’t weigh on Preacher’s conscience. He figured it would be just the bad luck of the draw—and that the varmint shouldn’t have tried to ambush him in the first place.
Before Preacher could strike, the man writhed in his grip with more strength than Preacher expected. Desperation turned his muscles into iron cables. He butted Preacher in the face and tore loose from the mountain man’s grasp.
Sensing as much as seeing the attacker’s movements, Preacher twisted away from a sudden thrust. The man had had a knife hidden somewhere.
The blade raked along Preacher’s si
The man recovered almost instantly and lunged forward again. The knife in his hand swept back and forth in swift, deadly arcs, forcing Preacher to give ground for a second.
He was only going to put up with so much. This varmint had tried to bash his head in, and now he figured on spilling Preacher’s guts on the ground.
Preacher wasn’t in any mood to get cut, even if it didn’t turn out to be a serious wound, so he palmed the right-hand Dragoon from its holster, eared back the hammer as he raised the gun, and squeezed the trigger.
A tongue of orange flame nearly a foot long licked out from the revolver’s muzzle as the gun’s heavy boom sounded. At this range, Preacher couldn’t miss—not that Preacher ever missed any shot, except on very rare occasions.
The .44 caliber ball slammed into the assailant’s chest and threw him backward as if he’d been punched by a giant fist. His arms flew out to the sides. He lost his grip on the knife and it clattered away. He crashed down on his back, kicked a couple of times, and then lay still.
“Gun against knife ain’t exactly fair, I reckon,” Preacher said, even though no one there was alive to hear him. “But at my age, I ain’t worried overmuch about bein’ fair.”
Nobody else had been moving along this stretch of street when the man jumped Preacher from the alley, which made it a good place for an ambush. Now, as Preacher glanced in both directions, he still didn’t see anyone.
But that shot might draw unwanted attention, so before anybody could show up to ask what was going on and waste his time, he pouched the iron, tucked the tomahawk behind his belt, and left the carcass where it had fallen. He moved into the dark shadows of the alley, strode along it to the far end, and came out on another street.
Turning to his left, Preacher tried to orient himself and figure out in which direction his destination lay.
That destination was Dillard’s Tavern, where he hoped to find the outlaw Seth Blakemore waiting.
Blakemore would be waiting for word of Preacher’s death, though . . . not for the legendary mountain man himself.
CHAPTER 2
Dillard’s Tavern was located on the outskirts of town under some cottonwood trees on a shallow bluff overlooking the Missouri River. It was a sprawling, one-story building of log and stone with twin chimneys, one at each end of the main structure.
Crudely built, tar-paper-roofed wings stuck out on the sides and the back. These were used mostly as cribs for the soiled doves who worked at Dillard’s. Small fires burned in pots along the trail leading to the tavern so customers could find their way to the place in the darkness.
Preacher paused on the bluff and looked north along the broad, slow-moving river that was the gateway to the frontier. Fort Leavenworth, the military post that had given the adjoining settlement its name, was located a few miles upstream, also on the west bank of the Missouri.
The town that had taken the fort’s name had been in existence for only a year or so, but it was a growing, bustling place already. Not only did many wagon trains full of immigrants pass through here, but the soldiers posted at the fort were frequent visitors as well.
Most of the local businesses were more than happy to take the soldiers’ money, but according to what Preacher had heard, they weren’t welcome at Dillard’s. It was the province of outlaws, gamblers, whores, cutthroats, and assorted thieves and highwaymen.
By venturing in there, he would be risking his life.
Luckily, this wouldn’t be the first time he’d done that, he thought wryly. Not by a long shot.
Because it was a warm evening, the tavern’s heavy wooden front door was propped open, held in place by a large chunk of firewood. Yellow light made murky by the thick tobacco smoke inside spilled out, along with loud talk, boisterous laughter, and assorted offensive smells.
Preacher, accustomed to the peaceful silences and clean air of the high country, made a disgusted face as he approached. Some taverns he didn’t mind—Red Mike’s in St. Louis was a longtime favorite watering hole of his—but he could tell this place was repulsive without even stepping foot inside it.
But the man he was after was in there, more than likely, so he tugged down the broad brim of his dark brown felt hat and moved through the doorway. All his senses and instincts were on high alert. His gaze darted from side to side, searching for potential threats.
No one appeared to pay much attention to him. They were all too caught up in their vices.
The bar, made of long, thick planks laid across whiskey and beer barrels, ran along the right side of the room. Men were packed along its length, some with buckets of beer lifted to their mouths, others drinking directly from whiskey bottles. Loud gurgling sounds came from them as they guzzled down the liquor that probably had been brewed right here, flavored with snake heads and spiced with gunpowder.
Rough-hewn tables were scattered around the puncheon floor. Some had chairs that were just as crudely constructed, while at others the patrons perched on kegs or crates.
At the back of the big room was an open space where men could dance with the slatterns who worked here whenever anybody had a fiddle and wanted to scrape out a few sprightly reels and flourishes.
Doorless exits on both sides of the room led to the wings where those slatterns plied their real trade. Several couples were headed that way as Preacher looked around the room. The women were dressed in plain cotton dresses that would be quick and easy to remove.
The men sported a much wider variety of garb ranging from fur trappers’ buckskins to the canvas trousers and homespun shirts of keelboat men, from the frock coats, beaver hats, and cravats of gamblers to the denim trousers and broad-brimmed hats of plains riders.
The squalid scene was lit by candles that guttered in brass holders attached to wagon wheels hung from the ceiling beams. The light was dim and inconstant to start with and was made even less illuminating by the thick clouds of bluish-gray smoke that hung in the air.
The smells of cheap tobacco, long unwashed flesh, spilled liquor, and human waste combined to form a pervasive stench that assaulted the nose.
Preacher hadn’t minded places like this when he was young, but he was old enough now to wonder what in blazes drew people to them. To be fair, though, the patrons of Dillard’s Tavern seemed to be enjoying themselves, judging by the hilarity going on around him.
Now, where was Seth Blakemore?
A particularly raucous burst of laughter drew Preacher’s attention. He looked across the room and saw half a dozen men sitting at a round table.
One of them had a girl on his lap, and whatever he was saying or doing to her—or both—had to be pretty bad if it made a serving wench in a place like this look as uncomfortable as she did.
That would have bothered Preacher to start with because he didn’t like seeing any woman mistreated, no matter who or what she was. But it was worse in this case because the man doing the mauling, much to the amusement of his friends, had long, curly blond hair under a black hat and a drooping mustache of the same shade.
That matched the description of Seth Blakemore that the people who hired Preacher had given him.
He hooked his thumbs in the gun belt around his hips and sauntered toward the table.
One of the revelers saw the tall, middle-aged, rugged-looking man approaching the table. Preacher wore a brown hat, a buckskin shirt, and denim trousers tucked in high-topped black boots. He packed two irons in holsters attached to the gun belt around his hips, as well as a tomahawk and a sheathed Bowie knife.
On a frontier full of dangerous men, an aura of exceptional menace hung around Preacher.
The man at the table must have realized that and read something in the mountain man’s expression and bearing to cause immediate alarm. He reached over, grabbed the arm of one of his companions, and gave it a shake.
The second man looked annoyed but listened to what the first one told him. He looked at Preacher and his eyes widened slightly. He leaned forward and said something across the table to the man Preacher took to be Blakemore.
