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  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  and J. A. JOHNSTONE

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  WHEN ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE

  A PREACHER & JAMIE 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

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Teaser chapter

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2021 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.

  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: 978-0-7860-4757-4

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4758-1 (eBook)

  Chapter 1

  Santa Fe, 1852

  As he sat at a table in a cantina, Jamie Ian MacCallister stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles. As tall as he was, as long-legged as he was, that meant he took up a considerable amount of space.

  And the cantina was crowded, so . . . it was only a matter of time.

  Not that causing trouble was Jamie’s intention. He was just getting comfortable.

  The big, shaggy-bearded man in the equally shaggy buffalo coat tripped over Jamie’s feet and nearly fell. He stumbled forward a couple of steps as his three friends laughed at him.

  “I didn’t think you were that drunk, Lomax,” one of them hooted.

  “You need a cane to help you walk, old man?” another man gibed.

  Lomax stopped, swung around, and glared at them. “It wasn’t my fault! I tripped over that varmint’s big clodhoppers!”

  He leveled a finger at Jamie, who ignored him and lifted a cup of coffee to his mouth to take a sip. It was flavored with chocolate and cinnamon, making it different from the black coffee Jamie usually drank, but it was quite good and he savored the taste.

  “Hey! Blockhead! I’m talkin’ to you!”

  Jamie glanced up and recognized the man, even though they’d never actually met. “I hear you, Lomax.”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doin’, stickin’ your feet out like that so folks trip over ’em?”

  “You could watch where you’re going,” Jamie suggested.

  “And you could get your damn feet outta the way!” roared Lomax.

  Jamie sighed and set the cup back on the table at which he sat. He straightened in the chair and pulled his legs back. “Satisfied?”

  Lomax smirked. “I reckon you could say that you’re sorry, too.”

  Jamie shook his head. “I pride myself on being an honest man.”

  The muleskinner’s smirk turned into a scowl. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “I mean I’m not particularly sorry.” Jamie said again, “You could watch where you’re going.”

  Lomax’s face was already flushed under the thick growth of beard. It turned even redder as he stared at Jamie. He was so outraged that he couldn’t find his voice for a moment. When he did, he demanded, “Do you know who you’re talkin’ to?”

  “Matter of fact, I do,” Jamie drawled. “Your name’s Roscoe Lomax. You’re a muleskinner. You ramrod some of the wagon trains that carry goods along the Santa Fe Trail. Got yourself a reputation as a brawler, as well as one of the filthiest of a foul-mouthed breed.”

  Lomax confirmed that by spewing a string of profane, highly creative obscenities. He followed that by saying, “If you know that much about me, mister, you know that I chew up and spit out anybody who gives me trouble. Now get on your feet, you . . .” Some colorful epithets followed.

  Jamie regarded the man with a mild expression, but when Lomax concluded by saying, “Stand up, damn you!”, Jamie complied. He put his hands flat on the table and slowly rose to his feet.

  Lomax was a big man, but it seemed like Jamie just kept rising and rising. He towered over everybody else in the cantina, and he was so muscular, so broad-shouldered in his buckskin shirt, that he seemed to loom like a mountain. His broad-brimmed, high-crowned, dark brown hat rested on thick, graying brown hair. The mustache that drooped over his wide mouth was the same shade. A rather large nose and deep-set, piercing eyes dominated his craggy face. He was in his forties, but he was weathered like a mountain, too. A sheathed B
owie knife was on his left hip, a holstered Walker Colt on his right.

  One of the muleskinner’s friends swallowed hard and said, “Oh, hell, Lomax, I recognize that fella now. That’s Jamie MacCallister.”

  “I don’t care if he’s Andrew Jackson and Davy Crockett rolled into one,” snapped Lomax. “Nobody shoots their mouth off at me and gets away with it.”

  “Those are some good men you’re talking about,” Jamie said. “I’ll thank you not to sully their names by mentioning them again.”

  Lomax took a step toward him, sticking out his chest and sneering. He was half a head shorter than Jamie but almost as powerfully built.

  “There you go again, tellin’ me what to do. I don’t like it, MacCallister. And just so you know . . . you don’t scare me, mister. Not one little bit.”

  “The feeling’s mutual, then,” Jamie said with a curt nod.

  Despite the crowd, the cantina had fallen silent.

  A few minutes earlier, a girl had been dancing while a couple of hombres played guitars. Her taunting smile, her swirling midnight hair, her lush bosom and bare shoulders in a low-cut blouse, her brown, flashing legs under the long skirt she twitched up as she danced, all had the men watching her clapping, whistling, and calling ribald encouragement.

  She backed away in the silence, retreating behind the bar, and the formerly rapt audience turned its attention to the confrontation in the corner.

  The man who had recognized Jamie said, “I don’t know if you should be doin’ this, Lomax. MacCallister’s fought Injuns and all sorts o’ badmen and has hisself a big ranch up in Colorado. He ain’t a man to mess with.”

  “Well, neither am I,” Lomax blustered. “Anybody with a lick o’ sense knows that I’m a man to stand aside from.”

  One of the other men snickered and said, “Yeah, because you’re liable to trip over somethin’ and fall on somebody, like you damn near just did a minute ago.”

  Lomax whirled on that unfortunate soul, who probably wouldn’t have said such a thing if he hadn’t been drunk. The muleskinner lashed out with a big, knobby-knuckled fist that crashed against the man’s jaw and sent him flying through the air to land on a nearby table, which collapsed under the impact and made the men who had been sitting there topple over backward in their chairs. They shouted angrily as they scrambled to their feet, grabbed the man who had fallen on the table even though the calamity hadn’t been his idea, and started punching him.

  Lomax’s other friends yelled and charged over to help the man being assaulted. Still more of the cantina’s customers leaped into the fray. The fight spread through the room like somebody had taken steel and flint and struck a spark that landed in a pile of black powder.

  Lomax frowned at the sudden chaos, then turned to look at Jamie and raised his voice to declare over the uproar, “Hell, I ain’t sure I want to fight you if there ain’t nobody to watch, MacCallister.” He jerked a hand toward the melee. “All these fools are too busy with their own scufflin’ now.”

  Jamie leaned his head toward the table and said, “Want to sit down and have a cup of coffee with me instead?”

  Lomax scratched at his beard, pushed his lips in and out as he thought about it, and after a moment he said, “Sure, why the hell not?”

  A thrown chair sailed through the air toward Lomax’s head. Jamie reached out, the movement smooth but almost too swift for the eye to follow, and grabbed the chair before it could strike Lomax. He set it at the table and nodded.

  “Obliged,” Lomax said.

  Jamie looked over at the bar, caught the eye of the proprietor, who was peering nervously over the hardwood, and raised his cup, then pointed at Lomax to indicate that the man should bring coffee to both of them. A few minutes later, one of the working girls weaved her way through the fighting, yelling crowd and set a tray with two cups on it on the table in front of Jamie and Lomax.

  “Hell of a note, ain’t it?” Lomax said as he picked up one of the cups.

  “Yep,” Jamie said. He sipped from the fresh cup. “I haven’t forgotten the things you called me, by the way.”

  “Don’t expect you to. But we’ll settle that later, I reckon.”

  Jamie nodded. They sat there and watched the brawl ebb and flow around them as they drank their coffee.

  Like a wildfire, the fracas burned itself out quickly. Half-conscious men were draped over the backs of chairs or sprawled in the wreckage of tables. Puddles of booze from broken whiskey and tequila bottles soaked into the hard-packed dirt floor. Moans and groans filled the air. The cantina’s proprietor stood behind the bar with both hands clapped to his mostly bald head as he looked around in dismay at the destruction and wailed, “Aiii, Dios mio!”

  Jamie nodded toward the man and said to Lomax, “You really ought to pay that hombre for all this damage, since you’re the one who started it.”

  “Me?” Lomax demanded. “It was your damn fault. You and your big feet!”

  Jamie shook his head. “You just weren’t paying attention where you were going.”

  Lomax gulped down the rest of his coffee and clattered the cup back onto the table. “That’s it,” he said as he surged to his feet. “You and me are gonna settle this once and for all, MacCallister.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Damn right, I’m sure! Come on, let’s get to it! I’m the rippin’est, roarin’est lobo wolf on the Santa Fe Trail! I’m gonna beat you to a frazzle! I’m gonna tear one o’ your arms off and whale the tar outta you with it! I’m gonna knock your head right offen your shoulders and . . .”

  Jamie stood up and uncorked a roundhouse right that landed while Lomax was still flapping his jaw. The blow lifted him off his feet and dumped him on his back with his arms and legs spraddled out. He managed to raise his head and groan once before it flopped to the side. He was out cold.

  “That was a mighty nice punch, Jamie,” a new voice called from the cantina’s doorway. “Glad I got here in time to see it.”

  “Thanks,” said Jamie without looking around as he flexed the fingers of the hand he’d just used to wallop Lomax.

  Satisfied that he hadn’t broken any bones, he turned his head and then frowned as he saw a man in an army uniform walking toward him.

  “I’d say it’s good to see you again, Colonel, but I’m not so sure about that. You’ve got some sort of job that’s going to keep me away from home for a while, don’t you?”

  “That’s right, Jamie,” the officer said. “I’m afraid I do.”

  Chapter 2

  San Francisco, 1852

  “Dadgum it, woman,” Preacher said as he tugged at the tight collar around his neck and grimaced. ”Are you tryin’ to strangulate me to death?”

  Colleen Grainger slapped lightly at his hand and said, “My goodness, Preacher, if you keep messing with that, you’re going to ruin it. You look so dapper and handsome, all dressed up in a nice suit. And you even shaved!”

  “Don’t get used to it,” muttered Preacher.

  “What did you say, dear?”

  “Nothin’. Are you about ready to go out and have dinner at this fancy eatin’ place?”

  “Yes, and then to Mr. Maguire’s theater. The local players are putting on a production of Hamlet. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”

  Preacher frowned. “Is there killin’ in that one?”

  “Yes, quite a bit.”

  “All right, then,” the mountain man said. “I reckon it won’t be too bad.”

  Colleen rested a hand on his freshly shaven cheek, which was so smooth that it felt strange to Preacher.

  “You’re just humoring me, aren’t you, Preacher?” she asked, smiling.

  “Nah, of course not. I want to go out and eat at the place and then see the play. It’ll be, uh, enjoyable.”

  “Well, I still think you’re lying, but it won’t hurt you to soak up a little culture.”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “It sure won’t.”

  But he was lying. He would have much rather b
een back at Red Mike’s, the riverfront tavern in St. Louis where he had spent so many happy hours—and quite a few dangerous ones—as a younger man.

  Red Mike’s wasn’t there anymore, though. The brawny Irishman who’d owned it had gone to live with his daughter and now spent his days in a rocking chair on her front porch.

  The very thought of living like that made Preacher shudder, right down to his bones.

  Colleen patted his cheek, then turned to pick up her handbag and go to the door of the hotel room. She looked mighty nice in the fancy, expensive green gown she wore, with her auburn hair piled up on top of her head like that.

  She was a widow in her early forties, about ten years younger than Preacher. Her late husband had struck it rich during the Gold Rush but hadn’t lived long enough to really take advantage of his new-found wealth. Colleen seemed to enjoy being rich, though. She could afford to indulge her every whim, and seldom hesitated in doing so.

  The money she had didn’t interest Preacher in the slightest. For him, true riches lay in clear, crisp mountain mornings, high country meadows, and peaks so tall that they looked like God His Ownself might live on them. As long as Preacher had enough money for provisions, powder, and shot, that was all he needed to reach those places where he was truly happy.

  On the other hand, Colleen Grainger was one hell of a nice-looking woman and mighty pleasant company, so he could put up with fancy restaurants and going to the theater, at least for a while.

  He had been in California for several months, just drifting around at loose ends after going out there with some friends, a young couple looking to make a new start. After making sure they were well established on a farm in that big valley to the south, he had taken his leave, not wanting to intrude on them.

  Eventually he’d wound up in San Francisco, which had boomed like blazes in the years since the Gold Rush, and had met Colleen Grainger, who evidently had seen something she liked in a scruffy old mountain man in a buckskin shirt. They had spent considerable time together since then, all of it enjoyable.