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  THE DEVIL’S CROSSING

  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

  Teaser chapter

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  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.

  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: 978-0-7860-4882-3

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4883-0 (eBook)

  Chapter 1

  The Sweetwater River, July 1852,

  in what will one day be Wyoming

  Ethan Prescott hipped around in the saddle, raised his hand in a signal, and bellowed, “Hold it! Hold it! Stop where you are!”

  The lead wagon was about twenty yards behind him. The driver, Frank DeVries, who was the captain of this wagon train, hauled back on the reins and brought the big, canvas-covered Conestoga to a halt. The trail was fairly narrow here, with thick brush on both sides, so the drivers of the other wagons stretched out in a line behind him had no choice but to halt as well. One by one, they lurched to a stop.

  Prescott turned to the young man riding beside him and said, “Go down the line and tell the leaders I want to see them up front.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tom Linford said. He was in his early twenties, lean, bronzed, at home in the saddle, and proud of his job as a scout for this wagon train. Prouder still to be working for the well-known wagon-master Ethan Prescott. He nudged his heels against his mount’s flanks and headed along the line of wagons, pausing to speak to several of the men who had been elected to form a council that advised Prescott and DeVries.

  He also slowed just long enough to trade a quick smile with Alma Stockton as he passed the wagon belonging to her family. She was beside her father on the seat, her sun bonnet shading her face but failing to hide the sparkle in her eyes or the blond curls that peeked out from under the bonnet. She was the prettiest girl Tom had ever seen, and she had consented to let him come courting of an evening.

  Tom delivered Prescott’s message to the half dozen members of the council. Some of them grumbled as they climbed down from their wagons and began trudging along the trail to join Prescott and DeVries by the lead wagon. Figuring that he needed to know what was going on, too, Tom rode back up there, drawing glares from the men on foot as he passed them.

  This was the first wagon train he had helped guide along the Oregon Trail, so he wanted to learn as much as he could from Ethan Prescott, who was an old hand at these journeys. Prescott’s first trip over this long trail had been more than ten years earlier. He was one of the most experienced wagon-masters in the business, so there was no one better to teach Tom Linford what he needed to know.

  Frank DeVries passed around a jug when all the men had gathered. The whiskey had been brought along mostly for medicinal purposes, and as captain, DeVries kept their entire store of it in his wagon and doled it out only as needed, or for quick nips like these when serious talking had to be done.

  Tom held the reins of both his and Prescott’s mounts as the wagon-master pointed along the Sweetwater River. The stream lay just ahead of them, its water sparkling in the sun.

  “That’s the Sweetwater,” he said. “We’ll follow it for quite a ways. But to do that, we have to go through there.”

  His finger moved, sweeping along the river’s course to where it flowed through a range of rugged hills.

  “You can’t see it from here,” Prescott continued, “but where the river cuts through those hills, the terrain gets pretty rough. Most of the way, the trail’s only wide enough for one wagon at a time.”

  DeVries said, “I don’t see why that’s a problem. We normally travel in single file, don’t we?”

  “Yeah, but we can swing the wagons out and form up into a circle if we need to, even when the brush kind of hems us in like it has been for the last few miles. Up there in the Narrows, we won’t have that option most of the time. We’ll have the river on one side of us, granite bluffs on the other, and like I said, just enough room for one wagon. No place to go if there’s any trouble.”

  “The Narrows,” repeated one of the men. “That’s what people call it?”

  “Some do,” Prescott replied with a shrug. “Some call it Three Crossings, or the Triple Crossing, because we’ll have to ford the river at least three times to get through there.” He paused. “And here lately, some folks have taken to calling it the Devil’s Crossing.”

  DeVries laughed and said, “That certainly sounds ominous. Is it really that bad, Ethan?”

  “The crossings themselves can be pretty difficult, depending on how high the river is and how fast it’s flowing. On some trips, when there’s been a lot of rain upstream, the wagons have had to stop and wait for the water to go down.”

  “We don’t want to do that,” spoke up Jethro Calhoun, a weedy pilgrim whose beard and mustache always seemed to have bare patches. “We got good land waitin’ for us in Oregon, and we need to get there and start workin’ it. If we can get a crop of some kind in before next winter, even a small one, it’ll sure help us get through.”

  “I know that,” Prescott said, nodding. “All those difficulties are just the regular ones, though, that hundreds of wagon trains have faced coming through here in the past. What’s changed lately is that rumors have started circulating of an outlaw gang operating in these parts.”

  “Outlaws!” Frank DeVries exclaimed. “All the way out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “We may be a long way from civilization, but that doesn’t mean this is unspoiled wilderness. I reckon there’ll always be predators, no matter where you go, and a group like yours . . . well, you make pretty tempting prey.”

  Prescott looked around at the circle of dismayed faces and went on, “Think about it. Not only are you carrying plenty of supplies that can be stolen and sold or traded elsewhere, but some of you also brought along all the cash you could gather up in order to help you
get started in your new homes. Add everything together, and there’s a considerable amount of loot to be had here.”

  “So you believe these bandits are going to attack us?” asked DeVries.

  With a grim look on his ruddy, white-mustached face, Prescott said, “I just don’t know, Frank. I looked into it before we started, because I knew our route would take us through here. They’re not hitting every train, only some of them. But is there a chance we’d be one of the unlucky bunches? Sure there is.”

  The members of the council looked solemn and downright scared, Tom Linford thought as he glanced around at them. He didn’t blame them; Mr. Prescott’s words were mighty worrisome. He thought about what might happen to Alma Stockton if bloodthirsty desperadoes attacked the wagons, and the possibility was like a cold fist closing uncomfortably on his belly.

  DeVries said, “From the sound of it, those hills up there and that narrow passage would be a good place for outlaws to lie in wait, sure enough. But what are our options? Is there another route we can take?”

  Prescott nodded and swept a hand toward the south. “There is. We can swing that way and go around the hills. It’s farther, and that’s not the only problem. People call it the Deep Sand Route, for a good reason. There are miles of soft, sandy ground that we’d have to cross. Your mules and oxen will wear themselves down to a nub pulling those heavy wagons. They’ll be so worn out by the time you get around the hills that you’ll have to stop for a while and let them rest and recover before you can go on. You should be safe from outlaws, though. It’s open country all around, without any really good places for an ambush.”

  “But if it’s farther that way to start with,” said Calhoun, “you throw in the sand slowin’ down the livestock and then the need for them to rest . . . just how long will it delay us if we follow that so-called Deep Sand Route?”

  “Two weeks,” Prescott said heavily. “At least. Maybe longer.”

  Calhoun shook his head. “Then I vote no, if it’s a vote that we’re takin’. We got to get to Oregon, dadblast it! Like I said, we got land to work.”

  “Now, hold on, Jethro,” said DeVries. “If it’s too dangerous to go through this . . . this Devil’s Crossing, maybe we’d be better off in the long run going around it. If we all get killed by outlaws, we’ll never get to Oregon!”

  “You heard what Prescott said,” Calhoun argued. “There ain’t no way of knowin’ if those bandits are even around here. We could make it through just fine and save two weeks. That’s two more weeks to get a crop in.”

  One of the other men asked, “How does the river look, Mr. Prescott? Do you think it would give us any trouble if we followed it? Would we be able to ford it all right?”

  “From what I’ve seen of it, the teams and the wagons can handle the crossings themselves without any more trouble than normal. Which, I’ll remind you, can be pretty tricky at times.”

  “But you’ve taken wagon trains through there before, right?”

  Prescott nodded and said, “Dozens of times.”

  “Have you ever lost any wagons?”

  “As a matter of fact, I haven’t. Not to the Narrows. But there can always be a first time,” the wagon-master added.

  DeVries looked at the other men and asked, “What do you think, fellas? Should we risk it?”

  “What do you think, Frank?” another man said. “We elected you to be captain. You’re the most levelheaded of the bunch.”

  DeVries rubbed his chin and frowned. He and Prescott had become friends during the journey, so he used the wagon-master’s given name as he asked, “Are you saying you won’t take us through this Devil’s Crossing, Ethan?”

  “Not at all,” Prescott replied without hesitation. “Part of my job is to make decisions, sure, but where something like this is concerned, the whole group ought to be in agreement, at least within reason. There’s just no way of knowing how much of a risk it would be, so I’ll abide by whatever you decide.”

  “Go on through,” Calhoun said with a curt gesture toward the hills. “It’d take too blasted long to go around.”

  One of the men said, “If the other route is as hard on the livestock as Mr. Prescott says, we might actually lose some of them by going that way.”

  He looked at Prescott for confirmation. The wagon-master nodded and said, “Could happen.”

  “I agree with Jethro,” the man said. A couple more nodded, and another said, “So do I. That’s too much of a delay.”

  Frank DeVries nodded slowly and said, “I’ll go along with the others. I think we want to risk following the river and going on straight through the hills.”

  “That’s what we’ll do, then,” said Prescott. “You fellas can go back to your wagons. We’ll rest the stock for a few more minutes, water them at the river, and then move out. We can put a few more miles behind us today and start through the hills fresh tomorrow.”

  The other men talked a few moments among themselves, then started back to their vehicles. DeVries said, “I hope we made the right decision, Ethan.”

  “So do I, Frank. So do I.”

  Prescott jerked his head to Tom Linford and walked toward the river. Linford followed, leading the two saddle horses.

  As the animals drank, Prescott stood hipshot, gazing toward the hills. Linford hesitated for a moment, then said, “I notice that we didn’t get a vote back there, Mr. Prescott.”

  The older man chuckled. “That’s because you and I are just hired hands, Tom. Those men back there are wagering everything they have, including their families, on this new start they intend to make in Oregon. The two of us, we don’t really have any stake in this.”

  “No, sir,” said Linford. “I suppose not.”

  Only our lives, he thought.

  Chapter 2

  A half hour later, the wagons once again began their slow, rocking, lurching journey westward, now rolling along the southern bank of the Sweetwater River toward the hills. While they were stopped, resting and watering the stock, Tom Linford had taken advantage of the opportunity to talk to Alma Stockton.

  “You and the other men seemed to be having such a serious discussion,” she said. She was shy and didn’t look directly at him as she spoke. “What were you talking about?”

  “Oh, Mr. Prescott was just telling us about a couple of different ways we can go from here.” He didn’t explain that he had just stood there listening. He hadn’t actually discussed anything.

  “What did you decide?”

  He hadn’t decided anything, either. As he had said to Prescott, they didn’t get a vote. But he didn’t want to get into that with Alma, so he just said, “We’re going to follow the river.”

  “Well, that seems reasonable to me. Rivers are usually the best routes, aren’t they?”

  “Usually,” Linford agreed.

  He debated with himself whether to tell her what Prescott had said about the threat of outlaws. Before their meeting broke up, the members of the council had decided not to spread the word among the others, for fear of starting a potentially needless panic. Linford wasn’t bound by that decision, though. If he didn’t get any voice in the way they did things, he wasn’t going to worry too much about abiding by their rules.

  When you came down to it, though, he didn’t want to worry Alma for no reason, so he said, “Your pa knows to keep his eyes open all the time, doesn’t he?”

  Alma looked at him now, a tiny frown prettily creasing her forehead. “Of course. Mr. Prescott and Mr. DeVries always tell everybody to be watchful.”

  “Good.”

  “Why did you ask that, Tom?”

  “No particular reason,” he lied. “I just figured it’s a good idea. The train’s been lucky so far, but you never know when trouble might crop up.”

  “No, I suppose not.” She started to turn away, then paused. “Tom . . . why don’t you come to our wagon for supper tonight? We have beans soaking, and Mama made fresh bread this morning.”

  He smiled and said, “That sounds good. And I’d sure enjoy the company.”

  She looked down again. “So . . . so would I.”