Frontier America Read online

  Look for these exciting Western series from bestselling authors

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  and J. A. JOHNSTONE

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  Preacher: The First Mountain Man

  Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter

  Those Jensen Boys!

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  Matt Jensen

  MacCallister

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  Perley Gates

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  AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS

  FRONTIER AMERICA

  A PREACHER & MACCALLISTER WESTERN

  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

  CHAPTER 33

  Teaser chapter

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 J. A. Johnstone

  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.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  PINNACLE BOOKS, the Pinnacle logo, and the WWJ steer head logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-4398-9

  Electronic edition:

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4399-6 (e-book)

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4399-7 (e-book)

  CHAPTER 1

  Preacher nestled his cheek against the smooth wood of the Sharps rifle’s stock and peered over the barrel. He stood behind the thick trunk of a pine tree, aiming back along the valley through which he’d been traveling all day.

  For a while now, he had felt a tingling on the back of his neck that told him he was being followed. Whoever was on his trail was about to be in his gunsights . . . and that wasn’t a good place to be.

  Preacher had been roaming these mountains for almost forty years now, although most folks wouldn’t guess by looking at him that he was in his early fifties. His hair was still thick and dark, as was the mustache that drooped over his wide, expressive mouth. He stood straight and tall and muscular, with his broad shoulders stretching the fringed buckskin shirt he wore.

  His brown canvas trousers were tucked into high-topped boots of a darker brown shade. His broad-brimmed hat was also dark brown, as were the crossed gunbelts he wore. In earlier days, from the time when Preacher had first come to the Rockies not long after the beginning of the fur-trapping era, he had carried a long-barreled flintlock rifle and a brace of flintlock pistols, but in recent years he had taken to using the. 52 caliber Sharps, and a .44 caliber Colt Dragoon revolver was holstered on each hip. Attached to one of the gunbelts was a squarish leather pouch holding a couple of already loaded extra cylinders for the Dragoons.

  To someone who had spent many years using muzzle-loading weapons, the Dragoons seemed like an incredible amount of firepower to have at his disposal. Preacher had spent a lot of time practicing with the revolvers until he could handle them swiftly and skillfully. The Sharps was a single-shot weapon like his old flintlock rifle had been, but it was extremely accurate, reloaded quickly, and packed enough punch to bring down a grizzly bear or a buffalo with one shot, if placed correctly.

  One thing that hadn’t changed was the heavy-bladed hunting knife Preacher carried in a sheath strapped to the gunbelt behind the left-hand Colt.

  Farther back in the trees, the rangy gray stallion Preacher called Horse waited, reins tied to a sapling. Preacher had told the big wolf-like cur known as Dog to stay there with Horse until he found out who was trailing them. They were not the first Horse and Dog to travel the frontier trails with him, but as always with the animals that seemed to find their way to him, they were good companions.

  He breathed easily and calmly as he sighted along the rifle’s barrel toward a cluster of boulders that filled a gap between two hogback ridges. He expected whoever was following him to emerge from the cover of those boulders momentarily. He had no way of knowing that for sure, but his instincts had seldom been wrong over the long years of surviving on the frontier ...

  They weren’t wrong now, either. A huge figure in buckskins rounded one of the boulders, striding confidently into Preacher’s view. The Indian was even bigger than Preacher, with broader shoulders. He looked almost powerful enough to pick up one of those boulders and toss it around like a toy, although in reality, of course, such a thing was impossible.

  The sight of the man caused Preacher to relax. A grin spread across the mountain man’s rugged face. He lowered the Sharps and was about to call out to the Indian when movement from the top of one of the boulders caught his eye. A tawny, muscular mountain lion was crouched there, tail twitching as it got ready to spring.

  Instantly, Preacher snapped the rifle back to his shoulder and then fired in a continuation of the same movement. He hadn’t taken the time to aim, but instinct and keen reflexes guided his shot. The heavy slug intercepted the mountain lion in midair as it leaped from the boulder. The big cat yowled and twisted as the .52 caliber round tore through its sleekly furred body, but the momentum of its attack caused it to crash into the big Indian anyway. The man went down under the mountain lion’s weight.

  Preacher lowered the Sharps and ran forward, drawing the right-hand Colt Dragoon as he approached. The mountain lion might still be alive, which meant that its intended target was still in danger.

  However, as Preacher came closer, he saw that the big cat had gone limp in death. The I
ndian lifted the carcass and shoved it aside, then looked up at Preacher with a surprised expression on his broad, copper-hued face.

  “Preacher!” he said.

  “Howdy, Big Thunder,” the mountain man replied. He holstered the Dragoon and extended a hand to the Indian.

  Big Thunder reached up. His ham-like hand enveloped Preacher’s and closed in a crushing grip. Instead of letting Preacher help him up, though, Big Thunder yanked and pulled Preacher down. Preacher yelled and dropped the Sharps as he sprawled on top of the Crow warrior. Big Thunder’s arms, as thick as young trees, closed around him and squeezed hard enough to make Preacher’s ribs groan.

  Grimacing, Preacher got both hands under Big Thunder’s chin and shoved up, forcing the warrior’s head back. The bear hug didn’t ease, so Preacher slammed a punch against Big Thunder’s slab-like jaw. That did about as much good as punching one of those boulders would have. Preacher rammed a knee into Big Thunder’s midsection, but the Indian’s belly was hard as a rock, too.

  Big Thunder’s lone weakness was his nose, Preacher recalled. He drew back his head and then butted the middle of the warrior’s face. Big Thunder grunted, and finally the terrible pressure of his arms diminished. Preacher bucked and heaved his body up, breaking Big Thunder’s grip. He shot another punch to Big Thunder’s nose to keep him paralyzed with pain for a moment, then rolled away quickly.

  Chest heaving as he tried to recover the breath Big Thunder had squeezed out of him, Preacher surged to his feet. A couple of yards away, Big Thunder lumbered upright and shook his head, causing fat drops of blood to fly from his nose. He stood there swaying a little, as if undecided what to do next.

  Preacher held up his left hand, palm out, and rasped, “Now just hold it right there, Big Thunder! Dang it, you’re gettin’ too old to be actin’ like this. Every time I come around, you try to fight me!”

  He spoke in the Crow tongue, Big Thunder’s native language. Preacher knew that Big Thunder had learned a little English over the years, but he had the mind of a child, and if there was something important to communicate to him, it was better to use Big Thunder’s own tongue.

  “But Preacher is the only one who can give Big Thunder a good fight,” the massive warrior said. He dragged the back of his hand across his face, leaving a crimson smear from his nose on the back of it. “We always do battle when you visit Big Thunder’s village.”

  “You mean you try to start a ruckus. I usually manage to talk you out of it, but you took me by surprise this time.”

  “Oh.” Big Thunder frowned and then flinched, as if he were thinking and the process was a little painful for him. “Big Thunder sometimes forgets things.”

  “That’s all right, old son, all of us do.” Preacher picked up his hat, which had fallen off during the brief scrap, and batted it against his thigh to get the dust off. He put the hat on, then picked up the Sharps and checked to make sure dirt hadn’t fouled its action.

  “You shot that cat?” asked Big Thunder as he waved a hand at the mountain lion’s carcass.

  “That’s right. I spotted him just as he was about to jump you. I’m glad I was able to shoot him in time.”

  “Big Thunder would have killed him if you did not.”

  Big Thunder sounded mighty confident about that, but Preacher wasn’t so sure. If the mountain lion had landed on Big Thunder’s back as it intended, it probably would have been able to rip out the Indian’s throat before Big Thunder could do anything about it. Preacher figured he had just saved Big Thunder’s life . . . but that wouldn’t be the first time, and for that matter, Big Thunder had saved him on occasion, too. The two of them were old friends, even though Big Thunder’s roughhousing might have made it seem that that wasn’t the case.

  Ten years had passed since Preacher had first met Big Thunder during an adventure that involved battling both a gang of ruthless fur thieves and a war party of bloodthirsty Blackfeet. Since then, Preacher had visited the Crow village where Big Thunder lived numerous times. He had a very good reason for that, in addition to renewing old friendships.

  His son Hawk That Soars lived there, along with Hawk’s wife Butterfly and their children, a boy known as Eagle Feather and a girl named Bright Moon.

  It had been a while since Preacher had been there, and he was looking forward to seeing Hawk and his family again.

  “What are you doing out here this far from the village by yourself, Big Thunder?” he asked.

  “Hunting.” Big Thunder scowled. “You have been gone for a long time, Preacher. Our hunting grounds are not as good as they used to be. We have to go out farther and farther to find enough game to feed our people. Waugghh! The white people and their houses on wheels drive away all the animals. Big Thunder wishes they would all go away and leave us alone.”

  Preacher knew the warrior was talking about the wagon trains full of immigrants headed west along the Oregon Trail, which ran some miles south of where he and Big Thunder were at the moment. Over the past decade, thousands and thousands of those settlers had made the long, arduous journey, hoping that a new life in the Pacific Northwest would be better.

  But to get there, they had to pass through hundreds of miles of territory where many different Indian tribes roamed, including the Crow. Naturally, there had been trouble. As Big Thunder had just indicated, the Indians didn’t like it when the whites—whom they regarded as invaders—encroached on their hunting grounds. As someone who had always been dubious of so-called civilization, Preacher understood that feeling quite well.

  It was true that sometimes the immigrants killed buffalo, deer, elk, and antelope for food on the way west. They had thinned the herds to a certain extent. But those herds were vast, and Preacher thought it would be many more years before the advance of civilization had a significant effect on the Indians’ food supply.

  Maybe he was wrong about that, he told himself now. Big Thunder was in a better position to know about such things than he was.

  “You are going to our village?” Big Thunder asked now.

  “That’s right.”

  “I will come with you. Let me take this cat with us. I will use its hide, and there will be meat for the pots from it.”

  Big Thunder picked up the carcass, not even grunting from the effort of lifting more than a hundred pounds, and draped it over his shoulders. He walked easily with it. When they got back to the village, the women would dress it out, then scrape the hide and stake it out to dry.

  Preacher retrieved Horse and Dog from the woods, then led the stallion as he walked with Big Thunder. He had never minded traveling by himself except for his four-legged trail partners, but it was nice having a human companion on this trek through the mountains toward the river where the Crow village lay in a bend of the stream. Big Thunder was talkative, filling Preacher in on all the gossip from the village. Preacher chuckled more than once at the stories. Whites tended to believe that Indians were stoic and emotionless, but in truth they led lives just as full of romance, comedy, and tragedy as anyone else.

  It was dusk before the two men reached the village. Cooking fires were already visible in the twilight as they approached. Several curs caught their scent and ran out to bark in greeting. Dog growled at them, and that sent them scurrying back toward the lodges, but the commotion had already alerted the village’s inhabitants.

  A group of warriors, some with bows and quivers of arrows, others carrying tomahawks, strode forward to see who was coming. The Crow were not as warlike a people as the Blackfeet, but they were still fierce fighters and not likely to be taken unawares by enemies.

  The warrior in the lead was a stern-faced, medium-sized man in his thirties. He smiled slightly, though, as he recognized the white man accompanying Big Thunder.

  “Preacher!” he said. “It is good to see you again.”

  “Broken Pine,” Preacher replied. The two men clasped wrists. Broken Pine had been a young warrior the first time Preacher had met this band of Crow. Now he was their chief.

&
nbsp; “Did this one try to fight you as soon as he saw you?” Broken Pine asked with a nod toward Big Thunder.

  Preacher laughed and said, “He did more than try. We had ourselves a good tussle, didn’t we, Big Thunder?”

  The massive warrior lifted a hand to his nose, which had stopped bleeding. He touched it gingerly and winced.

  “Big Thunder’s nose bled!” he announced. “It was a very good fight, but not long enough.”

  Broken Pine sighed and shook his head, but he didn’t actually seem upset. He said, “I have spoken with you about this, Big Thunder. If you keep fighting with Preacher, he will stop coming to visit us.”

  “No, he will not! Not as long as Hawk That Soars lives among us.”

  That was true. Preacher might have numerous children among the various tribes in the mountains and plains; he had wintered often enough with them and had always had a woman to warm his blankets at night. But Hawk was the only one he was certain was his son, the product of a winter spent with the Absaroka woman Bird in a Tree. The Absaroka and the Crow were close cousins—some went so far as to say they were the same tribe—and the Crow in this band had not hesitated to accept Hawk as one of them, since he was married to a Crow woman, in a way, at least.

  Preacher said hello to several other warriors with whom he was acquainted from previous visits, then asked, “Where is Hawk? I’m a mite surprised he wasn’t part of this greeting party.”

  “He went out to hunt today, too,” Broken Pine said. The chief’s face grew even more solemn than usual. “The game is not plentiful as it once was. We have given thought to moving our hunting grounds. But where can we go?”

  “There’s bound to be someplace that’s better.”

  “Where?” Broken Pine waved to indicate the territory to the east and south. “The white men and their wagons come closer every year, and they are as many as the ants that swarm from a mound. Their hunters range farther out from the trail the wagons follow. And there has been talk that the soldiers will come, too. They have not ventured close to us yet, but the time will come when they do.”