I still do on-site research (whenever possible) before starting a Western novel. I have wandered over much of the West, prowling what is left of ghost towns. Stand in the midst of the ruins of these old towns, use a little bit of imagination, and one can conjure up life as it used to be in the Wild West. The rowdy Saturday nights, the tinkling of a piano in a saloon, the laughter of cowboys and miners letting off steam after a week of hard work. Use a little more imagination and one can envision two men standing in the street, facing one another, seconds before the hook and draw of a gunfight. A moment later, one is dead and the other rides away.
The old wild untamed West.
There are still some ghost towns to visit, but they are rapidly vanishing as time and the elements take their toll. If you want to see them, make plans to do so as soon as possible, for in a few years, they will all be gone.
And so will we.
Stand in what is left of the Big Thicket country of east Texas and try to imagine how in the world the pioneers managed to get through that wild tangle. I have wondered about that many times and marveled at the courage of the men and women who slowly pushed westward, facing dangers that we can only imagine.
Let me touch briefly on a subject that is very close to me: firearms. There are some so-called historians who are now claiming that firearms played only a very insignificant part in the settlers’ lives. They claim that only a few were armed. What utter, stupid nonsense! What do these so-called historians think the pioneers did for food? Do they think the early settlers rode down to the nearest supermarket and bought their meat? Or maybe they think the settlers chased down deer or buffalo on foot and beat the animals to death with a club. I have a news flash for you so-called historians: The settlers used guns to shoot their game. They used guns to defend hearth and home against Indians on the warpath. They used guns to protect themselves from outlaws. Guns are a part of Americana. And always will be.
The mountains of the West and the remains of the ghost towns that dot those areas are some of my favorite subjects to write about. I have done extensive research on the various mountain ranges of the West and go back whenever time permits. I sometimes stand surrounded by the towering mountains and wonder how in the world the pioneers ever made it through. As hard as I try and as often as I try, I simply cannot imagine the hardships those men and women endured over the hard months of their incredible journey. None of us can. It is said that on the Oregon Trail alone, there are at least two bodies in lonely, unmarked graves for every mile of that journey. Some students of the West say the number of dead is at least twice that. And nobody knows the exact number of wagons that impatiently started out alone and simply vanished on the way, along with their occupants, never to be seen or heard from again.
Just vanished.
The one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old ruts of the wagon wheels can still be seen in various places along the Oregon Trail. But if you plan to visit those places, do so quickly, for they are slowly disappearing. And when they are gone, they will be lost forever, except in the words of Western writers.
The West will live on as long as there are writers willing to write about it, and publishers willing to publish it. Writing about the West is wide open, just like the old Wild West. Characters abound, as plentiful as the wide-open spaces, as colorful as a sunset on the Painted Desert, as restless as the ever-sighing winds. All one has to do is use a bit of imagination. Take a stroll through the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona; read the inscriptions. Then walk the main street of that once-infamous town around midnight and you might catch a glimpse of the ghosts that still wander the town. They really do. Just ask anyone who lives there. But don’t be afraid of the apparitions, they won’t hurt you. They’re just out for a quiet stroll.
The West lives on. And as long as I am alive, it always will.
Turn the page for an exciting preview of
BLOOD BOND: SLAUGHTER TRAIL
By
USA TODAY bestselling author
William W. Johnstone
On Sale June 2006
Wherever Pinnacle Books are sold
Prologue
He loved it. Loved the look on their faces. Loved the fear in their eyes.
All he had to do was walk past them, the delightfully whippy split-bamboo flail in his hand, and they cringed, knowing they might be the target, knowing they would indeed be the target. This time, next time, sooner or later the flail would seek their flesh.
Oh, how fine it was, the flail. He’d had it for years. Intended to have it always. When first he found it the flail was the color of pale, sun-washed sand, a light tan tinged with yellow. But that was long years ago. Now the wood—was it wood? he was not entirely sure what bamboo should be considered—now the slender, springy sections carried a lovely, varnishlike patina, the color of a golden sunset with an underlying shade of red.
Very appropriate the red for it was put there by the frequent and copious application of blood. The blood of cowering men. He liked the sound and the feel and the sight of the bamboo stinging their flesh. Splitting it open. Bringing the blood until their backs ran red with it. Until the flail took on its color.
Even more than the blood of men, he reveled in the blood of the women. Terrified women. Screaming women.
It was an odd fact, he mused. When he cut men with the precious flail, they hunkered down in fear or stood boldly in defiance, but either way they were almost always silent when the welts were raised and the flesh split apart.
Women, though, the women screamed. They begged. They wept loud and bitterly. They asked for mercy.
The flail had no mercy.
Nor did he.
Case Wilhelm smiled as he passed among them, smiled as if in benediction.
He held the wonderful, four-and-a-half-foot-long flail lightly in one hand while he looked, while he chose, while he decided which of them would provide an example for the others to learn by.
Ah, yes.
That one!
Wilhelm’s smile became wider as he altered his direction and took a firmer grip on the flail.
He began to tremble with anticipation. The flail, the power were his. The only thing that could make this better would be if he had a woman to castigate and to educate—he liked them the best—but at the moment all he owned were men.
That man, however, would do. He would do nicely.
Case walked faster, the flail rising and falling with the pumping of his arm.
He raised his hand, the flail poised above the chained man.
With a whirring sound that was to him the sweetest of music, the flail so sharply descended....
1
“I’ll race you to the square.”
“If we do that we will get fined.”
“So they fine us a dollar each. So what? Let’s make that the wager. Loser pays both fines, how does that sound?”
“Excellent. And for you, I will make it simple. Go ahead without me. You win. I’ll pay your dollar. How is that?”
“You’re no fun today,” Matt Bodine accused.
Sam August Webster Two-Wolves yawned. “What I am today is tired. Fortunately I know how to cure that. When we get to the hotel I’m going to take a bath, have a meal served at a table, and then go to bed. Wake me in about two days. Then I’ll think about a race if you still want to. A footrace, though. These horses are probably as tired as we are.”
“You always win those,” Matt observed.
Sam Two-Wolves’s handsome face split in a huge grin. “Why do you think I want it to be a footrace, brother?”
Matt shook his head. And held his horse to a walk. Sam was probably right. The horses were too tired from travel to be forced into a run through the narrow lanes and few thoroughfares of Santa Fe.
For more than a year the two, brothers by choice rather than birth, had been drifting, for the time being simply enjoying their youth and their freedom. Soon enough they would tire of exploration and want to settle down on the ranch land they owned in Wyoming. But that tim
e was not yet. At the moment they were happy wanderers, enjoying the country, enjoying meeting strangers and making friends of them, enjoying each other’s company.
Matt Bodine and Sam Two-Wolves had been as close as brothers ever since the long-ago day when, as boys, Matt saved Sam’s life. Matt was the son of a Wyoming rancher, Sam the child of a powerful Cheyenne chief and a highly educated woman from a wealthy Boston family. Since that day the two boys had been as close as brothers, spending time in each other’s homes, until Matt was ceremoniously made a blood brother of the young Cheyenne and accepted into the tribe as if he were one of them.
Matt was educated at home by his mother, a former teacher, while Sam went East to attend college. When Sam returned to Wyoming the two resumed their close friendship as if there had never been a separation.
The boys, now men, even looked alike, each standing over six feet tall and with a large, powerful frame. Matt had brown hair and blue eyes while Sam’s hair and eyes were black, but otherwise they could well be mistaken for brothers by birth.
They also happened to be exceptionally gifted shootists, adept with their Colt revolvers both as to speed and accuracy. Matt might have been a hair quicker with a gun, Sam slightly more accurate. Between them they were a formidable fighting machine. Or could have been. They were much more interested in enjoying life than in furthering the reputation that was already spreading about them.
At this moment they were returning to Santa Fe, which like Denver and Kansas City and a very few other places was among their favorite stops in their travels. When chance took them near Santa Fe they generally managed to find some excuse to stay a few nights at La Fonda, the handsome hotel on the public square just a few steps away from the Governor’s Palace. Returning to Santa Fe and La Fonda felt almost like a homecoming to them.
The narrow lanes wound past walled, adobe houses and dusty pens doing a haphazard job of containing goats and donkeys, chickens and ducks. Eventually the two men broke out onto the broad wagon road that was the end of the fabled Santa Fe Trail. They followed that into the heart of the city, and tied their horses at the hitching rings outside the fine old hotel where the likes of Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith once stayed. It was rumored that Jesse James visited there more than once as well, but if he did it was under an assumed name and no one seemed to know for sure.
One thing they could be very sure of was that they liked La Fonda and looked forward to their stays there.
The clerk at the little office cubicle in the lobby recognized them when they entered. He began to smile in welcome. “Hola, young gentlemen. Will you be wanting the same rooms as before?”
“That sounds just fine, Jose. An’ some hot bathwater as quick as you can get it up there.”
“Of course, Mr. Bodine, Mr. Wolf. Welcome.” Jose never had quite gotten a handle on Sam’s name and for reasons unknown always abbreviated it to Wolf. Jose, an assistant to the manager, turned and motioned to a boy, who quickly darted near and relieved both Matt and Sam of their saddlebags and bedrolls. Another youngster was dispatched to see to the needs of their horses, and a platoon of bellboys hurried away to fetch tubs and buckets of hot water for the baths.
“A fella sure can feel pampered around here,” Matt observed.
“Do you mind being pampered?” Sam asked.
“Not me. I was only making note of it, not complaining. No, sir, they can pamper me all they please an’ probably then some. I’ll suffer through it in silence.”
“That’s what I like about you, Matt. You are so brave.”
“Yeah, I kind of think I am too,” Matt answered with a grin.
The two collected the keys to their adjoining rooms and turned toward the stairs.
“Oh, wait, please. One moment,” Jose said before they were more than two steps away. “I almost forgot.”
Jose disappeared into the hotel office. He was gone for only a minute. When he returned he was carrying a soiled and much-traveled envelope. “This came addressed to either one of you gentlemen. It has been here for more than a month, I think, maybe two, maybe longer.” He handed the envelope to Sam, who happened to be standing closer to him.
“Mail? Who would be sending mail to us? And how would they know where to find us?”
“From all the chicken scratchings and postmarks on this envelope,” Sam said, “I’d say that it went to your father first and he forwarded it. Looks like it has made several stops since then.”
“Well, don’t just stand there. Open it.”
“In the room. I want to get these boots off and sit down for a change on something that isn’t moving. We’ll open it there.”
“Want me to read it to you?” Matt prodded while they headed to their rooms.
“No, thanks. It always bothers me how your lips move when you read,” Sam told him with a grin.
“Hurry it up then, will you. My curiosity’s up.”
“Keep your britches on, white boy. Remember that patience is a virtue.”
“I never claimed to have any virtues. Now hurry it up, darn you.”
Sam was laughing when they reached their rooms, both of them turning in at the room Sam preferred.
“Oh, my gosh,” Sam exclaimed. “I almost forgot about this fella. But then you always knew him better than I did.”
“Who?”
“Pete.”
Matt’s eyebrows shot up in inquiry.
“Peter Branvol. Remember him?”
“Of course, I do.”
When Matt and Sam were boys still learning the ways of each other’s culture, Peter Branvol was a cowboy working on Matt’s father’s ranch, a laughing, happy-go-lucky youngster in his early to middle twenties, probably not far then from the age Matt and Sam were now. He more or less adopted the two, teaching them the finer points of roping. And if the truth be known, teaching them to enjoy the crisply bitter flavor of beer as well. He took the two boys under his wing and contributed to their education.
“I haven’t thought about Pete in years. How about you?”
Matt shook his head. “He worked for my dad just two seasons. I looked for him coming hiring time the next year but he never showed. Never wrote to me either.”
“I got one letter from him after I went back East to school,” Sam said. “He was encouraging me, said I could make it in the white man’s world if I didn’t have a chip on my shoulder.” Sam smiled. “My mother had already told me that, of course. I always kind of wondered if she put Pete up to sending that letter.”
“She could have,” Matt said. “He rode with me a time or two when I went over to visit with your folks. So why is he writing now? And how did he find you?”
“Us. It’s addressed to both of us.”
“Then why are you reading it?”
“Because I’m the one with the college education. Now be quiet and let me look at this, will you?
I herd about your repution with a gun. Herd you helped some folks up to Colorado one time. I want to hire you. Cannot pay much but I need help. I am married now with a little boy and nuther coming. Got a place SW from Nogales in Sonora State, town called San Iba. I need help. Your friend, Peter James Branvol.
“This was mailed more than two months ago.”
“I wonder if he still needs help.”
“So what do you think?”
“You know good well what I think. I’m thinking the same thing you are.”
“We’ve already gotten rooms and it’s getting too late to travel today. I say we have those baths and a good sleep, then we’ll ride out again at first light tomorrow.”
“Just what I was thinking too. Now all we need are those bellboys with the tubs and the hot water.”
2
“I need a bath,” Matt complained.
“I can agree with that statement,” Sam told him.
“You’re one to talk.”
Sam sighed. “I would argue the point except that it is true. We both need baths.”
“I sure enjoyed the bath I had back in
Santa Fe.”
“It seems a long time ago, doesn’t it,” Sam mused. The two were sitting beside a very small fire at the foot of a low, rugged mountain northeast of Tucson. The comforts of La Fonda seemed very far away. Their supper had been stick bread and bacon, both roasted over the flames. The coffee was starting to boil now, its aroma spreading to the pine-scented night air.
“Uh-oh,” Matt said under his breath, his head coming up and his eyes flashing.
“Stay here.”
Matt nodded, but by then Sam Two-Wolves had already disappeared into the night, going as silently and as quickly as if he were evaporating on the moving breeze.
Matt reached for the coffeepot, poured himself a cup, and rocked back on his heels with the cup held under his chin so he could best enjoy the smell of it in anticipation of the flavor.
“Got enough here to share if you’d care to come out of that brush and sit with me,” he said without raising his voice.
After a few moments a man wearing ragged clothing pushed his way into view, pine needles crunching and tiny twigs snapping underfoot as he bulled his way through a clump of scrub brush. The man needed a shave and the services of a seamstress, but there was nothing unkempt about the carbine he held aimed in Matt’s direction. The weapon looked clean and properly cared for.
“I only have one spare cup,” Matt said as he motioned for the fellow to help himself to the coffee.
“Only need one.”
“What about your partners there?”
“I’m alone.”
“Mister,” Matt told him, “there are three of you. You right there. Another fellow standing right over there. And the third gent is crouched down beside that rock yonder where he likely thinks I can’t see him.”
“You got good eyes.”
“Good ears too,” Matt said. “You three make as much noise in the woods as a bunch of bull elk in the rutting season. I heard you coming five minutes ago.” He took a sip of coffee and nodded his approval. Smacking his lips, he said, “You really ought to put that gun down and have some coffee. It’s a mighty good pot if I do say so.”
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