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.
As long as I can peck away at a keyboard and find a company to publish my work, I will not let the Old West die. That I promise you.
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.
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PREACHER’S FORTUNE
By William W. Johnstone
With Fred Austin
On sale in January 2006
Wherever Pinnacle Books are sold
CHAPTER ONE
As with life itself, beauty and ugliness existed side by side in the country through which the lone man traveled. Stretches of barren desert alternated with bands of rich green vegetation that bordered the occasional stream. Ranges of pine-covered mountains shouldered up out of the arid landscape surrounding them. Some of the mountains were capped with snow that sparkled a brilliant white in the sun, a tantalizing reminder of coolness, while down below, the heat had set in, despite the fact that it was still early in the summer.
From time to time the traveler reined in his horse and sat there staring at the mountains. His only other companion, a massive, shaggy creature that appeared to be as much wolf as dog, sat down and waited patiently, tongue lolling from his mouth. The big cur was happy as long as he accompanied this particular human.
With their typical sanguinity, the Spanish explorers who had first come to this land more than a hundred years earlier had dubbed the mountains the Sangre de Cristos—the Blood of Christ. The man called Preacher could see how the mountains got the name. When the sun hit them just right, they did have a certain reddish hue to them that might remind somebody of blood. To Preacher, though, they were just mountains. One more obstacle to cross.
He had come up out of Texas after wintering there and was anxious to get back to his beloved Rocky Mountains, where he had spent so much of his life after running away from home as a boy. Texas had been all right. A mite too humid for his tastes, maybe, especially over east in those thick, piney woods. But the American settlers who were moving in, such as that big strapping McCallister boy and his pretty, yellow-haired wife, seemed to be fine, feisty folks. If the Mexican authorities who ran the place didn’t trod careful, they would have some real trouble on their hands in a few years. Americans wouldn’t stand for being mistreated for too long. They were a peaceful people at heart, but they loved freedom and would fight for it if they had to, by God! Preacher expected those Texicans wouldn’t be any different. He wouldn’t have minded being around to watch the fun when they finally got tired of ol’ Santa Anna’s high-handed arrogance.
By that time, though, he would probably be back up in the mountains, trapping beaver. That was his true calling.
Well, that . . . and getting into trouble, seemed like.
“Come on, Horse,” Preacher said as he heeled his mount into motion. “There’s bound to be a pass up there somewheres, and I reckon we better start lookin’ for it.” He rode toward the mountains at an easy lope, with the big wolflike dog bounding along ahead of him and the horse.
This Nuevo Mexico was part of Mexico too, but the government didn’t have the same problems here that it did over in Texas. There weren’t nearly as many Americans around, although more traders and trappers from the States were drifting in all the time. Many of them had come to stay too, unlike Preacher, who was just passing through. Charles Bent and Ceran St. Vrain had established a regular trade route between Santa Fe and St. Louis, and over the past few years, hundreds of wagons had gone back and forth over what folks had started to call the Santa Fe Trail. Preacher thought it was a certainty that there would be trouble sooner or later between the American settlers and the Mexican government in Texas. Over here in New Mexico, it was just a likelihood.
But again, the possibility didn’t worry Preacher overmuch. He liked a good scrap as well as the next man—well, better than some, to tell the truth—but he didn’t go out of his way to look for a fight. It would be fine and dandy with him if nothing happened to delay his return to the Rockies and those clear, cold, high-country streams where there were scads of beaver just waitin’ for him to take their pelts.
First, though, he had to get through the Sangre de Cristos, and before that he figured to stop for the night at a trading post he had heard about in Taos. It was supposed to be located at the foot of the mountains and was the last stop for travelers on their way north, the last outpost of any sort of civilization in that direction.
As a rule, Preacher wasn’t that all-fired fond of civilization, but as he rode toward the mountains, he had to admit to himself that a drink of whiskey, a hot meal, and a soft place to lay his head for the night might not be such bad things.
There might even be a pretty woman at that trading post. He purely did love the sight of a pretty woman.
“Bring out the whores, old man!” Cobey Larson bellowed as he slammed a knobby fist on the bar. The rough planks that had been laid down between two whiskey barrels to form the bar jumped a little under the impact.
“I have told you, Señor,” said the stocky Mexican man behind the planks. A worried frown creased his sweating forehead. “There are no women like that here, only my wife and daughter.”
One of the other Americans, the barrel-shaped Arnie Ross, laughed and said, “That sounds all right to me. I don’t care who the hell they’re related to, as long as they’re soft and bouncy in bed.”
The proprietor of the trading post, whose name was Vincente Ojeida, struggled to keep his composure in the face of these vulgar, insistent americanos. Their words were offensive to him and inflamed his blood with their insult to his honor, but he maintained a tight rein on his temper as he said, “If you wish supplies or whiskey, I can help you, but otherwise I cannot.”
Larson leaned closer, a scowl on his whiskey face. “Are you tellin’ me there ain’t even any squaws around here we can lay with?”
Vincente shrugged eloquently. “I am sorry, Señor. Such is the way of things.”
“Well, that may be all right for you. . . .” Larson reached to his waist and pulled a pistol that had been tucked between his belt. It was already loaded and primed, and as he raised it he drew back the hammer. “But I ain’t so philosophical. I b
een on the trail a damn long time, and I want a woman.” He pointed the barrel of the pistol at Vincente’s nose. “You get my drift, pepperbelly?”
Larson’s companions laughed as they enjoyed the show their leader was putting on. There were four of them: the rotund Ross, Bert McDermott, Hank Sewell, and Wick Jimpson. McDermott and Sewell were cut from the same cloth as Larson: lean, buckskin-clad men with hawklike faces. Jimpson was bigger, towering over the others. His shoulders had filled the doorway of his trading post from side to side when he came through it. His brainpower didn’t match his size, though. He was little better than a half-wit, devoted to Cobey Larson and willing to do anything Larson told him to.
Vincente had sensed that the five gringos were trouble as soon as he saw them saunter into the trading post. They arrived on horseback, with no wagons, so he knew they weren’t traders. They could have been fur trappers or even prospectors—some people believed there was gold to be found in the mountains, and there would always be men who searched for precious metals—but they did not have the look of men accustomed to such hard labor.
That left only one real possibility as far as Vincente could see: The men had to be bandidos, robbers who preyed on the trade caravans.
There were no other customers in the trading post at the moment, which emboldened the Americans even more. They crowded up to the bar, and Larson repeated his demand. “Bring out your wife and daughter! I want to see ’em!”
Elgera and Lupita were in the storage room at the back of the trading post. It was mere luck that they had not been in the big front room when the Americans entered. But Vincente knew the door behind him was open a crack, and Elgera would have heard the loud voices of the visitors and realized that the best thing for her and her pretty fourteen-year-old daughter to do was to stay out of sight. She was smart as well as beautiful, and that was one more reason Vincente considered himself a very lucky man to have married her. He himself was not so intelligent, else he never would have mentioned the very existence of a wife and daughter to these beasts who walked like men. The words had slipped out before he could recall them. Now he had to try to repair the damage.
“They are not here, Señor,” he said, trying to make his voice sound forceful. That wasn’t easy when he was staring down the barrel of a pistol.
“You just said they were!”
“They live here with me, of course, but they are not here now.”
“Well, where the hell are they”
Vincente wished he was better at thinking up lies. “They have gone to the mission,” he said.
“Mission? What mission?”
“In the mountains,” Vincente said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the peaks that loomed over the trading post. “They have gone to pray in the church. A . . . a pilgrimage.”
Larson brought the pistol closer to Vincente’s face and prodded the tip of his nose with it. With an ugly grin on his face, Larson said, “I think you’re lyin’. I think them women are here, and you just figure they’re too good for the likes of us. Well, that’s where you’re wrong, pepperbelly. Trot ’em out here, or I’ll blow your damn head off.”
Vincente’s heart slugged heavily in his chest. Elgera must have heard that threat, and he knew his wife well enough to know what she would do next. Unwilling to stand by and let her husband be murdered, she would rush out and take her chance with the americanos. He just hoped she would have the sense to hide Lupita somewhere in the storeroom first.
But it didn’t come to that because at that moment, another man said from the open front door of the trading post, “I wouldn’t do that, friend. You shoot him and I’ll have to pour my own drink, and I ain’t in much of a mood to play bartender.”
All five of the men swung around to look at Preacher. That meant the one who had the gun in his hand was sort of pointing it toward him, and Preacher didn’t like that. Generally, whenever a fella pointed a gun at him, Preacher shot the son of a bitch before the son of a bitch could shoot him. It seemed only reasonable.
This time, however, he restrained the impulse to draw one of the pistols at his waist. He had been in the saddle all day, and he was tired. Killin’ meant buryin’, and digging graves was hard work.
“Who the hell are you?” the man with the drawn gun demanded.
To a bunch of hard cases like these, he probably didn’ look like much. He was tall and lean—enough so that some folks might call him skinny—and dressed in buckskins that had seen better days. He hadn’t trimmed his dark hair and beard in a while, so he supposed he looked a mite shaggy. A felt hat with a big, floppy brim was cocked back on his head. He looked almost sleepy as he leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, but anybody who took the time to look close at the deep-set, piercing eyes under bushy brows would see that they told a different story.
“Who, me?” Preacher said mildly. “I’m just a pilgrim passin’ through these parts, friend. Not lookin’ for any trouble. Thought maybe I’d rest myself and my horse here for the night before we start over the pass in the mornin’.”
“This ain’t any of your business, so you’d be wise to keep your nose out of it.”
“I expect you’re right.” Preacher brought his left hand up and laid a finger alongside his nose. “But this here proboscis of mine is too big to keep out of things sometimes. You like that word? Means long nose. I heard it once from a fella who had a lot of book learnin’.”
“Ah, hell, Cobey,” the short, round man said. “He’s just a half-wit of some sort. Probably dumber than Wick.” He jerked a thumb at the biggest member of the group, a huge young man with a dull expression on his face.
The one with the gun grunted and said, “Yeah.” Addressing himself to Preacher, he went on. “Turn around and ride out of here, mister, if you’re smart enough to know what’s good for you.”
Preacher chuckled. “You’ve sure got me figured out, friend. I’m nosey and I’m dumb.”
“I ain’t your friend, damn it! Quit callin’ me that!” The man turned back to the stocky Mexican, who Preacher assumed was the proprietor of the trading post. “Now, are you gonna bring them women out here, or do I have to shoot you?”
“Women?” Preacher called. “What women? There’s women here?”
Cobey looked back over his shoulder and said through gritted teeth, “Are you still here? This greaser’s got a wife and daughter stashed somewhere, and we aim to have ’em!”
Preacher’s left hand rubbed his bearded jaw. “I sure am glad you told me we ain’t friends.”
“What?” The gunman half-turned toward Preacher again, his annoyance showing plainly on his face.
“If we ain’t friends,” Preacher said, “then I don’t have to feel bad about doin’ this.”
He drew his pistol and shot the man called Cobey.
CHAPTER TWO
The bullet ripped through Cobey’s arm, missing the bone but gouging out a considerable hunk of flesh and splattering blood. It was his gun arm, which meant that the pistol in his hand flew across the room. It hit the wall and went off, but the heavy ball buried itself harmlessly in a barrel of flour.
Preacher hadn’t been expecting trouble, so his pistol wasn’t double-shotted. If it had been, Cobey probably would have been dead by now, but the fella was lucky. He got to live, as long as he didn’t do anything else stupid.
The same went for his companions, so to keep them from getting frisky, Preacher pulled his second pistol and leveled it at them. He did it fast, while they were still gaping in surprise.
“You boys stand still,” Preacher told them. “Fat boy, see to your friend. The rest of you, don’t move.”
Cobey had slumped to his knees in front of the makeshift bar and clutched his wounded right arm with his left hand. His face had gone gray under its tan, but Preacher had to give him credit for toughness. He hadn’t yelled in pain, hadn’t made a sound, in fact, other than breathing hard.
His round friend hurried over to him and knelt beside him. He pulled a dirty bandanna fro
m a pocket in his buckskins and tied it tightly around the wound, trying to stanch the flow of blood.
The air in the trading post smelled like burned powder. Preacher looked at the proprietor and said, “Sorry about the mess, amigo. I know blood can be mighty hard to get up out of floorboards.”
“That . . . that is all right, Señor.”
The door behind the man swung open far enough for a woman to peer out into the front room. Preacher saw dark eyes and a mass of thick raven hair. When the woman rushed out and threw her arms around the proprietor, she revealed just how pretty she was. She was followed by a younger, smaller version of herself. The wife and daughter he had heard mentioned, Preacher decided. Nobody else they could be.
It would have been better if the two of them had stayed in the back room, out of sight. Preacher could understand, though, why the woman had wanted to rush out and make sure her husband was all right. She would have heard that shot and not been sure exactly what had happened.
But as it was, her presence, and especially that of her daughter, immediately made things worse. Because the biggest of the hard cases, who was built sort of like a mountain, stared at the girl for a couple of seconds and then said, “I want her.” He took a lumbering step toward the bar.
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