A Hill of Beans
Look for these exciting Western series from bestselling authors
WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE
and J. A. JOHNSTONE
The Mountain Man
Preacher: The First Mountain Man
Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter
Those Jensen Boys!
The Jensen Brand
Matt Jensen
MacCallister
The Red Ryan Westerns
Perley Gates
Have Brides, Will Travel
The Hank Fallon Westerns
Will Tanner, Deputy U.S. Marshal
Shotgun Johnny
The Chuckwagon Trail
The Jackals
The Slash and Pecos Westerns
The Texas Moonshiners
AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS
A HILL OF BEANS
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
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
Chuckwagon Trail Recipes
Teaser chapter
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2020 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.
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. 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: 978-0-7860-4406-1
Electronic edition:
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4407-8 (e-book)
ISBN-10: 0-7860-4407-1 (e-book)
CHAPTER 1
Dewey “Mac” Mackenzie was settled in for the night. His horse, picketed close by, grazed contentedly. The campfire burned low, crackling softly and issuing an occasional muted pop that sent a brief swirl of sparks dancing above the flames. Evening meal resting comfortably in his belly, Mac sat cross-legged on his bedroll, nursing a final cup of coffee before he’d be ready to stretch out, pull the blankets over him, and drift off to sleep.
Life wasn’t too bad, Mac decided. After spending the past several months on a pair of separate trail drives followed by a brief but memorable stopover in the crowded, frantically expanding city of Denver, he savored this period of quiet solitude. The crews of the trail drives he’d joined were, for the most part, decent, hardworking hombres whose colorful ways and rough-hewn sense of humor he’d enjoyed being around. A couple of the men had made lasting impressions he would carry in his memory for a long time, even though he had to move on and go his own way. And the time he’d spent in Denver had been an enjoyable experience, too.
But at the same time, the latter had proven beyond any doubt that he was no longer cut out for big-city life beyond an occasional visit for the good times to be had.
So now, with all that behind him, Mac was on the drift, alone, and it felt pretty good. He still had a few dollars left in his pocket, even after his generous sampling of Denver nightlife, and he had a vague notion of heading west, toward California, but without any particular sense of urgency.
In fact, the only real urgency in Mac’s life was trying to ride clear of certain events that had befallen him nearly two years ago down in New Orleans. They had cost him the woman he’d once believed to be the love of his life—Evangeline, who now loathed him due to falling for a pack of lies that convinced her he was responsible for the brutal murder of her father.
The perpetrator of those lies, the true murderer yet the man she had now fallen in love with and was wed to, was one Pierre Leclerc, a cunning schemer out to attain the holdings and wealth of the family he had successfully married into.
To make sure nothing got in the way of all he had so ruthlessly gained, Leclerc had hired a virtual army of bounty hunters to track down and kill Mac to prevent him from ever returning and attempting to reveal the truth. Members of Leclerc’s horde had caught up with Mac on each of his recent cattle drives, but with some luck and a little help from his new trail pards, Mac had managed to keep from falling prey to them.
For the time being at least, Mac felt reasonably confident none of Leclerc’s hounds were barking anywhere close on his heels. That was the way he wanted to keep it, a big part of why he meant to stay on the move and put as much distance between himself and New Orleans as possible.
After draining the last of the coffee, Mac was slapping the grounds out of the bottom of the cup when his horse, picketed over on the other side of the campfire, suddenly perked up its ears and chuffed nervously about something. Mac had been riding the deep-chested paint long enough to have developed a trust in its instincts.
He rose to his feet, right hand absently brushing across the Smith & Wesson Model 3 revolver tucked in the belt of his pants. The horse stood poised, not overly agitated yet very alert to something. Mac swept his gaze in all directions, peering into the darkness as deeply as he could. He saw nothing and neither did he hear anything.
But then he did. A low, distant rumble. Very faint but growing louder and closer. At first he thought it might be far-off thunder from a storm moving in. However, a quick scan of the sky showed nothing but an uninterrupted wash of stars from horizon to horizon.
Then full recognition hit Mac. He’d heard that sound before. Too many times. And it only took once for it to make a lasting impression.
Somewhere not too far away, a herd of cattle had been spooked and was on the run. A full-blown stampede was underway, and as the rumble grew louder, Mac judged a pretty good-sized herd was caught up in it.
His first instinct was to saddle up and ride out to see if he could try and help turn the herd. Then he hesitated, remembering that not only wasn’t he part of the outfit driving the herd but—except for a general sense that the stampede was occurring somewhere off to the south—he couldn’t even be sure of locating it and catching up in time to do any good.
Once more, however, the paint had a say in the matter. It chuffed again and pawed the ground with one of its front hooves. A trained cow pony, the animal also recognized the sound and knew it had a part to play when cattle were running out of control.
Mac gave a grunt of his own. Danged if the nag wasn’t right. He ought to at least try to lend a hand, no matter what. The damage a stampede could do, both to the cattle themselves as well as the wranglers trying to stop them, could be plenty serious. And anybody who was close enough and had the right experience should feel obligated to pitch in and offer some aid.
Moving quickly, Mac grabbed his saddle and slapped it on the paint’s back. Fingers flying with well-practiced movements, he had the gear cinched up in no time. A moment later, he was mounted and wheeling the paint around, then kneeing the eager animal into motion.
The rumble grew steadi ly louder. Given the way sound had a sometimes-tricky way of fanning out across prairie terrain and making it difficult to pinpoint the exact location of its source, Mac gave the paint its head. It seemed to have a strong sense of where they needed to go.
Sure enough, it wasn’t long before they topped a grassy hill and came in sight of the boiling mass of stampeding longhorns. In fact, the onrushing critters were headed straight toward them. Luckily, they were still far enough off to allow Mac time to swing the paint out of the way and then fall in beside the panicked herd as those in the lead went thundering by.
This put Mac in a good position to go to work on halting the stampede. The way it was done—at least the way he had been taught—was to force the lead animals to turn back against the flow of those rushing behind. This created the equivalent of a dam being thrown up against a torrent of floodwater. The resulting collision of massive bodies sometimes caused some unfortunate injuries, but still less than the trampling and goring that would take place if the stampede continued unchecked.
Mac dug his heels into the paint, urging it faster, aiming to once again draw even with the frontrunners of the rushing cattle. He felt excitement building inside him, caught up by the roar of pounding hooves, the taste of dust on his tongue, the frantic bawl of the cattle, and the reflection of moonlight in their wild eyes and on the tips of their slashing horns.
As he rode, Mac became aware of other horsemen closing in to attempt the same task. At least one on the other side of the herd and one or two more coming up behind him.
The land was a series of blunt hills and shallow draws, with a few rock outcrops poking up here and there. As he drew even with the front of the herd, Mac peered ahead, wishing for more rugged features to help slow the cattle but seeing none. But with or without any help from Mother Nature, the cattle still had to be stopped. Drawing the Smith & Wesson from his belt, he reined the paint closer to the leaders and fired some shots skyward.
“Heeyah! Ease up, cattle! Ease up!”
The horseman across the way began cracking a long whip in front of the longhorns’ snouts, also shouting and cursing. Two riders closed in around Mac and started firing their pistols, too.
“Turn, cattle! Turn, you muleheads!”
Some of the leaders began swinging their heads inward toward the middle of the mass, pulling away from the gunshots and the pop of the whip, balking, slowing down slightly. But the push of the cattle in the middle and at the rear drove them on.
Then, finally, the terrain dealt a bit of a helping hand by way of a sharp slope feeding down into a wide, funnel-shaped depression with some stubbly rocks rimming the far side.
“There! There!” somebody shouted. “Drive ’em into that choke point! With the sides squeezin’ in on ’em and those rocks rising up in their faces, they’ll have to slow down!”
And that’s pretty much the way it went. With the sloping walls of the depression pressing them from the sides, the cattle plunged into the funnel-shaped opening. There, the rim of stubbled rocks and the ongoing shooting and shouting of the cowboys did the rest—turning back the leaders and at last bringing the whole strung-out mass to a weary, puffing halt.
“Let ’em mill! Let ’em mill! They’re good and tired out now. As soon as they discover there’s decent grass under their feet, they’ll be happy to stay right here for the rest of the night.”
Mac couldn’t get a good look at who was giving this advice. But whoever it was, it was good advice to follow.
As the herd steadily grew calmer, showing more and more signs that all the run was worn out of them, Mac continued to ride the paint slowly back and forth alongside them, talking low and soothingly. Just to make sure.
Only when he was satisfied the cattle were sufficiently settled down did he look around for some of the other riders who’d also been in the thick of things. He spotted three of them clustered together twenty yards away and gigged his paint toward them.
“Hey, fellas,” he said as he drew nearer. “Those cows sure had themselves worked into a state. What riled ’em, anyway?”
One of the three men snapped his face around and aimed a menacing look in Mac’s direction. Half a second later, he was aiming something else—the hogleg he’d pulled from the holster on his hip.
“You ought to know, you rustling polecat! And something else you’re about to learn real quick is what a big mistake it is to mess with what belongs to the Rafter B!”
With that, his finger tightened on the trigger and the hammer came down—striking with an empty click that really wasn’t very loud but was still enough to cause Mac to jerk reflexively in his saddle.
Twice more the would-be gunman cocked and triggered the Colt, with the same results. It was suddenly clear that he’d fired off all the cartridges in his wheel while getting the herd turned and hadn’t yet bothered to reload.
That realization hit Mac along with a wave of instant anger—anger quickly whipped into rage by the thought of this ungrateful varmint trying to shoot him after he’d risked his neck helping save the skunk’s herd.
Driven by this rage, and with no conscious thought beyond it, Mac dug his heels into the paint’s ribs and charged straight at the man still pointing his empty gun. The paint thudded heavily against the other man’s horse and knocked it to one side.
In the same instant, Mac launched from the saddle and flung himself onto the man who’d tried to shoot him. The Colt went flying, the horses twisted away, and the two men toppled to the ground in a tangle of flying fists.
CHAPTER 2
Luckily, Mac landed mostly on top. The impact of hitting the ground was still jarring, but hardly enough to curb Mac’s anger or to slow the barrage of punches he continued to launch.
The man absorbing those punches was taller, a lantern-jawed specimen leaner in build and not as thickly muscled as Mac. He quickly proved to be a scrapper, though, and neither the blows Mac was landing nor the crash to earth seemed to have knocked any noticeable amount of fight out of him. His own fists and elbows shot up and around and drilled frequently into Mac as the pair rolled pummeling and kicking across the ground.
With neither man gaining any advantage that way, they broke apart and scrambled to their feet. Mac immediately went on the attack again, lunging forward and throwing a whistling roundhouse right at the point of his opponent’s prominent chin. The taller man jerked his head back at the last second, however, so the blow ended up being only a glancing one. It was still enough to knock the tall man off balance, sending him staggering a step and a half to his right.
Mac moved after him, stepping in close and following up with a left hook to the ribs that landed solidly. A whoof! of escaping breath issued from the tall man, and he bent sharply toward the side where the blow had landed.
But then Mac got too eager and let his forward momentum pull him in too close. His opponent made him pay for it with a slashing left elbow that whipped back with blinding speed and banged hard against the side of Mac’s head. Bells went off and stars danced before his eyes, and this time it was Mac who did a stutter step.
Before he could catch his balance and try to shift away long enough to let some of the stars fade, the tall man finished his spinning move and brought around a clubbing right that slammed against the side of Mac’s head at almost the same exact spot as where the elbow had landed.
This time Mac did more than stumble. He staggered violently, his knees feeling momentarily rubbery, almost giving out on him. But the rage still burned strongly enough in him to force him to stay on his feet. Blast it, he would not go down to this cowardly cowboy who’d drawn and fired on him for no good reason.
Mac planted his heels stubbornly as the tall man came rushing toward him. Instead of trying to hold up against the rush, Mac hurled himself forward also. He barely had time to build any momentum of his own, but at the last second, he leaned forward—ducking the tall man’s punch as he did so—and lowered his head so that it rammed squarely into his attacker’s solar plexus.
The tall man’s forward movement abruptly halted. He folded forward, his chest, shoulders, and face flopping down over Mac’s shoulder as he expelled another great gush of air driven from every corner of his stomach and lungs. Mac straightened up with a sudden surge and flung his opponent off. As the tall man stumbled backward—clutching his belly with both arms, mouth formed into a perfect “O” as he tried desperately to suck some breath back in—Mac stepped after him and put all his weight into a right cross that smashed devastatingly into the inviting bull’s-eye made by that mouth. The tall man dropped like he’d been pole-axed.