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
LUKE JENSEN BOUNTY HUNTER HIRED GUNS
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
THE JENSEN FAMILY FIRST FAMILY OF THE AMERICAN FRONTIER
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
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: 978-0-7860-4424-5
Electronic edition:
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4425-2 (e-book)
ISBN-10: 0-7860-4425-X (e-book)
THE JENSEN FAMILY FIRST FAMILY OF THE AMERICAN FRONTIER
Smoke Jensen—The Mountain Man
The youngest of three children and orphaned as a young boy, Smoke Jensen is considered one of the fastest draws in the West. His quest to tame the lawless West has become the stuff of legend. Smoke owns the Sugarloaf Ranch in Colorado. Married to Sally Jensen, father to Denise (“Denny”) and Louis.
Preacher—The First Mountain Man
Though not a blood relative, grizzled frontiersman Preacher became a father figure to the young Smoke Jensen, teaching him how to survive in the brutal, often deadly Rocky Mountains. Fought the battles that forged his destiny. Armed with a long gun, Preacher is as fierce as the land itself.
Matt Jensen—The Last Mountain Man
Orphaned but taken in by Smoke Jensen, Matt Jensen has become like a younger brother to Smoke and even took the Jensen name. And like Smoke, Matt has carved out his destiny on the American frontier. He lives by the gun and surrenders to no man.
Luke Jensen—Bounty Hunter
Mountain Man Smoke Jensen’s long-lost brother Luke Jensen is scarred by war and a dead shot—the right qualities to be a bounty hunter. And he’s cunning, and fierce enough, to bring down the deadliest outlaws of his day.
Ace Jensen and Chance Jensen—Those Jensen Boys!
Smoke Jensen’s long-lost nephews, Ace and Chance, are a pair of young-gun twins as reckless and wild as the frontier itself . . . Their father is Luke Jensen, thought killed in the Civil War. Their uncle Smoke Jensen is one of the fiercest gunfighters the West has ever known. It’s no surprise that the inseparable Ace and Chance Jensen have a knack for taking risks—even if they have to blast their way out of them.
Chapter 1
Luke Jensen was in a fix. A bad one.
What made it worse was knowing that he had been put there by the likes of the Turpin twins. How galling would it be if, after all the hardcases he had gone up against and survived, he would end up having his sun finally set by a pair of no-account knotheads like Oscar and Augie?
Not that Luke was ready to give up. Giving up wasn’t something that ran in the Jensen bloodline. But at the same time, neither did foolishly refusing to face the facts—and the facts when it came to his current situation were pretty grim.
He’d followed the two fugitives into this cramped, twisty canyon with its high, ragged rock walls knowing full well the risk that he might be riding into an attempted ambush. But having narrowed the gap between him and the brothers to such a slim margin after being on their trail for more than a week, he was anxious to close in the rest of the way and complete his mission of taking them into custody for the prices on their heads.
That was Luke’s trade. He was one of the most renowned bounty hunters in the West. Good enough, he reckoned, to pit his skills against the risk of anything the Turpins might try to spring against him.
As it turned out, he’d underestimated the craftiness of his prey. The only thing that saved him was that whichever of the brothers had skinned out of his saddle and clambered to a hidden crevice high up on the canyon’s north wall miscalculated when it came to firing at a downward angle in his attempt to back-shoot the bounty hunter as he passed below. The bullet sliced through the front brim of Luke’s hat, harmlessly knocking it from his head and sending it tumbling end over end rather than splitting the skull it had been resting upon.
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nbsp; The fraction of a second Luke had before a second bullet came sizzling in his direction was enough—though just barely—for his lightning reflexes to kick in and once again save him from the bite of hot lead. He pitched to his left out of the saddle and hit the ground rolling, scrambling immediately in amongst some various-sized boulders that littered the base of the canyon’s south wall. Luckily, some of these broken, ragged chunks remained large enough that they provided him cover against the continuing rifle fire angling down from the opposite wall.
But while Luke was safe for the moment, the same did not prove true for his horse. Without its rider, panicked by the repeated roar of the rifle and the craack-whine! of slugs ricocheting wildly off the surrounding rocks, the animal wheeled and tried to bolt away. It went barely a step, however, before the rifleman planted a bullet in its brain. As the unfortunate horse’s legs buckled and its heavy body began sinking to the ground, the shooter drilled home a follow-up round for good measure.
At least the loyal critter that had served him well over many a hard mile hadn’t suffered, Luke told himself... but that didn’t necessarily mean he could guarantee the same for the piece of vermin who’d gunned it down.
The loss of the horse itself was only part of Luke’s concerns. His Winchester was still in the saddle boot, still attached to the fallen animal where it now lay twenty feet away. And all the while there was the ongoing rifle fire that continued to slap and chip at the boulders behind which Luke remained pinned down.
As he hunkered tight to the ground, eyes narrowed and teeth clenched against the gritty dust being kicked up all around, Luke’s mind raced. He saw then how it had played out, how one of the brothers had quit his saddle, taking care not to touch the ground and leave a footprint that might have provided Luke some warning, and climbed quickly to a concealed spot up on the sharply sloping, deeply seamed canyon wall. He’d then waited patiently for the pursuing bounty hunter—still following the double set of hoofprints that continued along the canyon floor—to show himself and move into a spot where the ambusher had a clear shot.
Luke silently cursed himself for failing to notice that one of the sets of hoofprints must have started appearing more shallowly sunk into the sandy canyon floor after the horse’s rider left the saddle. It was oversights like that that got men killed, and the kind of mistake Luke prided himself on never making. Yet he had. And the only reason he didn’t end up dead as a result was due to the ambusher not being accurate enough to score the head shot he foolishly tried to pull off instead of aiming for the larger target of his intended victim’s torso.
So things could have been better, but they could have been a lot worse. As long as he was alive, he still had a fighting chance. And the brace of Remington. 44s strapped around his waist, butts forward for the cross-draw, gave him the means to put up a fight. His ammunition was limited to only the full wheels in each gun and the extra cartridges snugged in the loops of his shell belt, but if he made each round count, they represented a heavy toll for anyone bent on coming at him.
The only thing lacking was some kind of opening so he could bring the Remingtons into play. The way he was pinned down, not only was he being given no chance to shoot back, but he hadn’t even been able to determine exactly where the rifle fire was coming from.
As long as he stayed hugged tight to the boulders currently protecting him, Luke was safe. But he figured it was just a matter of time before the rifleman pouring lead his way would try to shift to a position where he had a better angle and could plant a slug where it would do more damage.
It also seemed likely that before too long, the other Turpin brother—the one who had continued riding and left the misleading hoofprints for Luke to follow—would double back and join in the ambush. If this second brother took to the high rocks of the canyon wall on the same side where Luke was hunkered, he would have a better vantage point to shoot from and Luke would find himself in even worse shape.
Luke had to make something happen before it came to that.
Despite the craftiness they’d displayed so far, Luke reminded himself that the Turpins remained a couple of dim candles in even the densest gloom. He had to try to use that as part of his defense against them.
When there was a lull in the shooting, probably while the rifleman was reloading, the bounty hunter called, “Hey, Turpin! You’re a holy terror when it comes to blasting horses and rocks! I’m surprised I’ve never seen that mentioned on any of the wanted posters issued against you.”
“You just shut up and don’t worry about it,” came the response. “One more inch and I’d’ve took your whole head off, instead of just that stupid hat!”
“Aw now, don’t go running down my hat. It was a perfectly good one until you went and ventilated it with a bullet hole.”
“Yeah, and I’m gonna ventilate your worthless hide, too, before I’m done!”
Luke went quiet again, his mouth curved in a thin smile. The exchange of words had been enough for him to tell that Augie was the twin he was talking to. Augie had a speech peculiarity he was left with after a knife blade split his lower lip back when he was a youth.
It also made sense that Augie would be the brother chosen to do some climbing and hiding up on the canyon wall. Though both he and Oscar had nearly identical facial features—both ugly—the years had packed a number of added pounds onto Oscar, leaving him bloated and ponderous while Augie remained relatively lean and spry.
This made for another slight break in his favor, Luke told himself, as far as the notion of Oscar doubling back and trying to close in on him from a second elevated position. Oscar’s bulk would make any such attempt mighty difficult, and if he did attempt it, it was bound to be slow, awkward going for him.
That gave Luke even more incentive for trying to turn the tables on Augie, while he was without the usual backup of his brother.
Considering the reports he’d heard about Oscar being the brains of the pair, according to most who’d spent any time around them, Luke calculated there might be something there he could use to needle Augie, maybe fluster him some.
“Boy, I bet your brother is gonna be mighty impressed when he sees that dead horse and all those rocks you’ve killed. That’ll sure make him proud he left you to take care of ambushing me, won’t it?”
“Shut up!” Augie hollered, his voice quavering with rage. “I’ve got you pinned down like a bug under a cup, don’t I? You ain’t got a chance of crawlin’ out of there alive!”
With that, he loosed another relentless volley, the rounds hammering and slamming the boulders shielding Luke until the canyon for dozens of yards in either direction reverberated with the roar of the gun punctuated by the scream of wildly ricocheting slugs.
This time when Augie momentarily halted, Luke was ready. Although he hadn’t dared poke his head up to gain an actual sighting, getting Augie to talk had allowed Luke to make a good estimate of where he was positioned—close enough, at any rate, to throw some return lead and demonstrate he was hardly a hopelessly trapped bug like Augie said.
Gripping one of the Remingtons in his right hand, he shoved up on his left elbow, thrust the Remy out over the crest of his protective boulder, and triggered four quick rounds at the spot where he judged Augie to be. He made a short sweep with the gun muzzle as he fired, planting slugs at two-foot intervals just above the bottom lip of a horizontal slash on the face of the canyon wall little more than a dozen feet above its base. The hollowed-out area filled with the spang of bullets and the rattle of flying rock chips. An alarmed curse spat out from the midst of all that and Luke very briefly saw a flash of orange—the same color as the shirt Augie had been wearing when Luke caught a glimpse of him through field glasses a couple of days earlier.
Luke dropped flat behind the boulder again, pressing the smoking Remington tight to his chest. One corner of his mouth quirked slightly upward. He didn’t believe he’d been lucky enough to score a serious hit on Augie, but he had the satisfaction of knowing he’d been accurate
in placing the bushwhacker’s position and had sure made it hot for him. The thing now was to go for a quick follow-up before the dim-witted Augie saw the urgency in shifting to a different spot.
As he rapidly thumbed fresh cartridges into the Remington to replace the spent ones, Luke called out, “Hey, Augie! In case you didn’t notice, I guess the bug under the cup is a little more lively than you figured, ain’t he?”
“Even a dyin’ bug sometimes manages a death twitch—but that still don’t mean it’s got long to live!” Augie hollered back, a sneer in his voice.
Then he cut loose with the rifle again, raining more lead down on Luke’s boulder. As far as Luke could tell, the angle of fire remained the same, meaning Augie figured to use this latest bit of blasting as cover fire in an attempt to move to a new position—or he was even dumber than Luke thought and was sending a signal that he intended to hold right where he was and wait for Oscar to show up in order to help seal the lid on the man who’d been dogging their trail for so long.
Luke drew his second Remington and once more readied himself for a lull in the shooting. If Augie lingered just a little bit longer in the ragged cavity where Luke had caught sight of him, the bounty hunter had an idea for possibly eliminating him in a way that didn’t necessarily involve trying to plant a bullet in him or even needing to gain sight of him again. It was a long shot, but no worse than trading fire blindly until he ran out of bullets.
In his mind’s eye, Luke re-played a vision of the spot where Augie had chosen to conceal himself—the horizontal slash in the rock face of the canyon’s north wall. It was apparent this cavity had been created many years ago by a large rock slab, loosened over time by rain and wind, breaking away and toppling down to leave the hollowed-out gap behind.
Hired Guns Page 1
