The first sign of a response came from Roland’s cabin. The front door opened and Ying-Su emerged. She stepped out with a boldness and with her head and exotically beautiful face held higher than the way it was usually lowered in subservience. Her garb was also different than the usual form-fitting silk; instead she wore loose pants and a flowing blouse.
Then the door of the mess hall opened and Dr. Carstairs and the mine foreman, Mace Vernon, stepped out. For a moment, their expressions were sober, somewhat suspicious. After a good look at what stood before them, however, Carstairs’s face broke into an elated grin. “Tom, are you a sight for sore eyes! We thought we’d seen the last of you when you rode out yesterday.”
“I had sort of the same feeling,” Eagle admitted. “But as you can see, it didn’t quite work out that way.”
Looking around, frowning, Luke said, “What’s going on around here, Doc? Apart from our surprise appearance, things don’t feel the same.”
“That’s because they’re not. Not by a long shot,” said Vernon. “You fellas making it back is just icing on the cake. But after you got taken away yesterday, some of us finally decided to grow some guts and reached the breaking point on how far a man can go along with something so sick and wrong.”
“I think I like what I’m hearin’,” said Eagle. “But maybe you need to put a little finer point on it.”
“It’s simple enough,” Carstairs told him. “As soon as Dixon rode off, those gun toughs he left behind along with the rest of Ferris’s boys decided to relax their guard and aim their pistols toward having some fun with the whores the Gold Button keeps on hand for entertaining the crew. While the cat’s away sort of thing. At the same time, Vernon and me figured we were overdue to start acting like men and there was never going to be a better chance. So with the help of some of Mace’s miners, including all the Chinese workers thanks to Ying-Su urging them on, we got the jump on those rascals and put them under our guns.”
“Not to overdo it with the clichés, but we caught ’em with their pants down,” Vernon said.
Eagle gave a low whistle. “I don’t know from clichés, but that was some mighty slick work!”
“We’ve got them stuck down in a dead-end mine shaft for the time being, until we could decide what to do with them,” said Carstairs. “Now that you’re here, Sheriff, I guess you can make the call on that.”
Roland seemed to be only peripherally listening to any of this. His eyes were on Ying-Su, who had walked over from the cabin. “And you aided in this?” he said to her in a forlorn tone. “I was good to you!”
“You made me your personal whore, and I was disgusted by every second of it,” she replied in perfect English, her own tone filled with disdain. “What is more, we both know that when you tired of me, you would have brought in a new girl and cast me to the cribs with the others!”
Roland hung his head and looked somehow more deeply hurt and dejected than at any time up until now. After a moment, in a voice barely above a whisper, he said, “You can take the shotguns away now. Untie me and lead me to the safe in the mine office where the deeds and other papers are. I’ll sign over everything you want. You have your town and your valley back now.”
Chapter 50
Luke hung around Hard Rock Valley for nearly three weeks, recuperating from his injuries, helping out, watching the town and the outlying places like Barlow’s horse ranch and MacGregor’s farm start to come back to life. With the telegraph lines up and likely to stay up for a while, Dr. Carstairs wasted no time sending for his wife and daughter. Others who’d been driven out but had known present whereabouts were also contacted to see if they had any interest in coming back. Some indicated they would, others were quick to pass.
Ben Pettigrew and his son had plans to expand the blacksmith shop and run it together after Heath and Belinda Eagle got married in the fall. Red Baker headed for the mountains and back to prospecting, alone, as soon as he was able to scrape together enough gear. Before leaving the mountain encampment, Neal Vickers finally got up enough courage to ask the widow Mary Hobart to marry him, but she turned him down, gently, saying she had too many harsh memories of Hard Rock Valley and, against the protests of her son, needed to find somewhere else to live. Ying-Su indicated an interest in rebuilding the Palace Saloon. And Chang-Ha, one of Vernon’s lead men at the mine, with whom Ying-Su had been having a secret affair while being kept by Roland, was ready to side her in the venture.
As for Vernon, once Roland had signed the Gold Button over to him, he proceeded to turn it into a joint operation with those miners—white and Chinese alike—who were willing to stay on with him and share in the earnings from whatever they were able to get out. Maybe the mother lode Parker Dixon believed so strongly in was really somewhere to be hit, maybe it wasn’t.
For Roland’s part, true to his word, he disbanded what was left of his father’s gun toughs and, after they got back to Helena, made arrangements for Ngamba and M’Botu to return to their homeland. Outside of that, he delved into Dixon business interests in and around Helena and, as far as anyone knew, never gave another look north toward Hard Rock Valley.
With all the moving and refurbishing and building going on, Dewey Akron was kept busy with enough odd jobs until the saloons opened up again and he could go back to swamping for beer money and a sleeping pallet in a storeroom. But wherever he was and whatever he was doing, inside his head Dewey was always on the lookout for that Rebel patrol just over the rise.
Like Dewey, Luke also carried something inside himself. The urge to move on, to never stay in one place too long. As the days and weeks passed, he felt it building.
And although he didn’t know how, others sensed it also. Which he took for one more sign that he was getting too close, that it was time to drift.
One day he sat on a boardwalk bench cleaning his beloved Remingtons, having retrieved them from the pile of guns taken off the hardcases at the Gold Button before Carstairs and Vernon herded them into a mine shaft. It turned out that Paul Grimsby, one of Hack Ferris’s boys (left behind by Ferris, who was still on the run somewhere), had taken a shine to them and was figuring to wear them himself once he heard about Luke getting thrown to the dogs. Since getting them back, Luke had been wiping them down and oiling them incessantly.
Eagle came along and took a seat next to him. He said, “You know, if any of Grimsby did rub off on those Remys, I’m pretty sure you’ve long since got it cleaned away.”
“Nothing wrong with a man taking good care of the tools of his trade,” Luke responded.
“Uh-huh. About that . . . a fella and his trade, that is . . . You know this place is ready to grow, to bust wide open one of these days. You can see it, can feel the energy building, can’t you?”
“Point being?”
“Well, before too long I can see where I might be needin’ me a deputy. Of course, I’d have to try you out . . . be sure you got the right makin’s and can hold up in a tight spot, you understand . . . But the thing is, there’d be a steady job for the right fella if one was lookin’ to settle down hereabouts.”
“Uh-huh. That’s something to keep in mind. Trouble is, I’m not.”
“Not what?”
“Not looking to settle down.”
Eagle made a face. “Doggone it, Luke, why not? You don’t want to roam all over Creation huntin’ down nasty hombres for the rest of your days, do you? And you know blamed well there are more reasons than that, here especially, to think about settlin’ down.”
Luke grinned. “As a matchmaker, you make a good half-breed . . . from the Rattlesnake Tribe.”
“Aw, come on, you know how smitten Dinah is with you.”
“Smitten?”
Eagle frowned. “That’s one of Jane’s words. Women talk, I guess. But that don’t make it any less true.”
“But it still doesn’t change anything, either. And the longer I put it off, the harder it’s going to be.”
“You know,” Eagle said, his mouth tight,
“there are also people besides Dinah who wouldn’t mind seein’ you stick around.”
“And to those people, my fondness and gratitude is returned,” was Luke’s only reply.
Dinah helped make it somewhat easier that night. “I know there’s no holding you. I’ll accept what has to be, and not beg,” she told him. “I just ask two things: When it’s time for you to leave, look me in the eye and say good-bye—don’t sneak off in the middle of the night. And when you go, don’t you leave behind any money for me.”
“But you want to start up your café again. You’ll need—”
“I’ll make out. I always have, I always will. Not another word.”
So, in the morning, while she was still sleeping, Luke had leaned over her and kissed her gently on the cheek. When she opened her eyes and looked up at him, he said, “I’m saying good-bye now.”
Then he rode away.
In the first town he came to with a post office, he mailed her some money with a note:
I kept my agreement, I didn’t leave money behind.
I’m sending this to help get your café going again.
That way, if I ever pass back through Hard Rock,
I’ll always know where I can get a good meal from
the prettiest gal in Montana.
–Luke–
Keep reading for a special excerpt of a new Western epic from WILLIAM W. and J. A. JOHNSTONE . . .
THE FIRST MOUNTAIN MAN
PREACHER’S FRENZY
Johnstone country. Where the good die young. And the bad die sooner.
There are two kinds of traps in the Old West. One is the kind that Preacher and his buddy, Charlie, use to catch a mountain-load of fur pelts. The other is the kind that Charlie steps into—a trap set by a low-life gambler and his seductive partner in crime to swindle Charlie out of his fur money. Preacher hates to see a good friend get robbed. So he sets off after the grifters—on a riverboat bound for New Orleans. First he infiltrates the criminal underworld of the French Quarter. Then he’s enslaved on a pirate ship heading straight to hell. Now there’s only one way out for Preacher. And that’s to make a deal with the devil herself: a female of the species deadlier than the male . . .
Look for PREACHER’S FRENZY, on sale now wherever books are sold.
Chapter 1
The alligator lunged at Preacher, massive jaws wide open and sharp teeth ready to clamp down on him with flesh-rending ferocity and bone-crushing power. The mountain man dived out of the way and then flung himself back across the muddy ground, slipping and sliding a little on the bayou bank. The gator writhed after him, its tail thrashing wildly as it pursued him. Preacher had to leap straight up to avoid the next savage attack.
He turned in midair so he faced the same direction when he came down on top of the gator.
Preacher clamped his knees around the deadly reptile’s barrel-shaped torso and yanked his hunting knife from the sheath at his waist. As the alligator curled its head around toward him, trying to reach him with those deadly teeth, Preacher leaned forward and rammed the blade into the creature’s right eye as hard as he could.
The gator spasmed, thrashing so hard that it almost threw Preacher off. Even in the beast’s death throes, those massive jaws continued snapping, so Preacher figured the safest place for him was still on top. He hung on, hugging that wet, scaly hide as he ripped the blade free and struck again and again.
The gator rolled over onto him. Preacher’s ribs groaned from the weight. Then abruptly the burden lifted and Preacher found himself on top again—but only long enough for him to grab a breath and replace the air that had been forced out of his lungs.
The gator rolled onto him again and both of them tumbled off the mossy bank into the bayou. Water splashed high around them and flooded into Preacher’s mouth, nose, and eyes. He gagged and spat out the stinky, slimy stuff.
A few yards away, the gator continued to flail and send water flying into the air with its futile struggles. Death had claimed the creature already, Preacher’s knife having pierced its prehistoric reptilian brain, but that message hadn’t caught up with the alligator’s body.
Where one of the blasted critters lurked, there could be another—or more—Preacher reminded himself. Not to mention cottonmouth moccasins and who knew what other dangerous things. Best to get out of the bayou as quickly as he could.
As he pulled himself out of the water, a foot in a high-topped black boot stomped down right in front of him, squishing water out of the muddy ground. Preacher stopped and raised his head so his eyes could follow the whipcord-clad leg up to the burly torso of a man pointing a flintlock pistol at his face. From Preacher’s angle, the barrel of that pistol looked about as big around as the mouth of a cannon, with the hammer already pulled back and cocked, ready to fire.
“You never should’ve come into the swamp, mountain man,” the fellow said.
Preacher thought about the gator and everything else he had run into in this blasted muck and knew the man spoke the truth.
Preacher made his home in the mountains, and he never should have left.
St. Louis, three weeks earlier
“There she be,” Preacher said as he reined Horse to a halt atop a brush-dotted hill with a view down toward the settlement sprawled beside the Mississippi River.
“I know,” Charlie Todd said as he brought his horse to a stop, as well. “I’ve been here before, remember? Aaron and I outfitted here before we headed west.”
Even after all this time, Charlie’s voice still had a little catch in it when he said his friend’s name. They had been close, and Charlie hadn’t forgotten—would never forget—the terrible way Aaron Buckley had died.
“I know how you feel, but you’re doin’ all you can for him,” Preacher said. “Takin’ his share of the money from those pelts back to his family is more ’n a lot of fellas would do.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the four packhorses on lead ropes trailing behind them. Those animals carried bundles of beaver pelts that Preacher and Charlie planned to sell in St. Louis.
Charlie and Aaron came from the same town back in Virginia, and the two young men had headed west together, looking to make their fortune in the fur trapping business—and have some adventures along the way, to be honest about it.
They had found adventure, all right—more than they had bargained for since teaming up with the rugged mountain man known as Preacher.
“You’re sure about not comin’ back out here?” Preacher went on as he and Charlie sat on horseback, looking down at St. Louis in the distance. A faint haze of smoke from all the chimneys hung over the settlement, a sure sign of so-called civilization.
Charlie sighed and nodded. “I’m sure, Preacher. I’ve had enough of the frontier. You’re cut out for it, but I’m not.”
Preacher regarded his young companion for a moment. Charlie’s time in the mountains had toughened him, honing away the soft pudginess, turning his fair skin bronze, giving his features a harder, more seasoned cast than they’d had when Preacher first met him.
But at the same time, Preacher knew the truth of what Charlie said. The young man had survived the wilderness and all its dangers, and he could be justly proud of that fact, but the time had come for him to go home.
“All right,” Preacher said. “Let’s go sell these furs.”
He nudged the rangy gray stallion called Horse into motion and started down the trail made by thousands of saddle mounts and pack animals as fur trappers set out for and returned from the distant mountains. Ahead of them, the big, wolflike cur known only as Dog bounded on down the gentle slope, on the lookout for a rabbit or some other prey in the clumps of brush.
Suddenly, he stopped and stood stiff-legged, the hair on the back of his neck and along his backbone standing up a little.
Preacher heard the low growl that came from the cur’s throat and reacted instantly. “Dog, hunt!” he yelled. “Split up, Charlie!”
He jerked Horse to the left even as he sh
outed the commands. From the corner of his eye, he saw Charlie veer swiftly to the right. Charlie had spent enough time with Preacher to know that he needed to follow the mountain man’s orders immediately, without hesitating or even thinking about them.
At the same time, Dog leaped forward, low to the ground. As a rifle boomed from the brush, the ball kicked up dirt well behind the big cur. He disappeared into the growth, his thick fur making him heedless of any branches that might catch and claw at him.
Preacher guided Horse with his knees as he yanked two loaded and primed flintlock pistols from behind the broad belt at his waist. He saw a muzzle flash from the brush close at hand, followed instantly by the roar of a shot and a spurt of powder smoke. A low hum sounded in his ear as the ball passed close.
Thumbing back the hammer of his left-hand pistol, he pointed it and pulled the trigger. The weapon, double-shotted with an extra-heavy charge of powder, bucked hard in Preacher’s hand, but his great strength controlled the recoil. The balls ripped through the brush, rewarding the mountain man with a cry of pain.
Somebody else screamed over where the brush thrashed around, and Preacher figured Dog had introduced himself to that ambusher. He threw a glance toward Charlie, still mounted and with his rifle at his shoulder. Preacher fired into the brush in the other direction.
Movement caught Preacher’s eye as another man to his left stood up and fired an old-fashioned blunderbuss at him. Preacher had plenty of time to duck, and as he did, he turned in the saddle to bring his right-hand pistol to bear. Smoke and flame billowed from its muzzle and the ambusher flew backward as if slapped by a giant hand. Preacher knew both balls had slammed into the man’s chest.
The first man he’d shot wasn’t out of the fight after all, he discovered a second later. The would-be killer burst out of the brush, shrieking in rage. Crimson coated the left side of his face from a wound that had laid his cheek open to the bone. One of the balls from Preacher’s pistol had ripped along there, and it should have been enough to leave the man whimpering in pain on the ground.
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