Chapter 3
Preacher’s eyes narrowed at the revelation. He was surprised but not shocked. For years he had accepted the possibility, even the likelihood, that he had fathered children among the various Indian villages where he had wintered in times past and had always had a woman to warm his robes.
As many years had gone by since he had come to the mountains, he probably even had a few grandchildren scattered here and there.
It bothered him a little to think about that. He supposed he didn’t have the same normal yearning for offspring most men did—he had always valued his freedom too much for that—but the feeling wasn’t completely lacking in him.
Even though he wasn’t around to raise and protect them, he hoped any young’uns he might have gotten started were happy and healthy, leading good lives in the mountains. Logically, he knew that probably wasn’t true in every case, but he didn’t let himself think about that too much.
That way, as Audie might say, lay madness.
Birdie was looking at him like she expected him to say something. He did some quick ciphering in his head and cleared his throat. “That was twenty winters ago.”
“It was,” she agreed.
Preacher glanced at the scowling young man. Hawk That Soars, Birdie had called him. He was about the right age . . .
Preacher understood why the youngster looked familiar. It wasn’t just that he resembled his mother Bird in the Tree. Some of those features were almost identical to the ones Preacher had seen gazing back at him from the creek a while ago. From time to time he had seen himself in looking glasses, too, so he knew the general outlines of his face. The resemblance was undeniable.
He turned back to Birdie. “You should have told me.”
“Would knowing have made you stay with us?” she asked.
It was Preacher’s turn to scowl. He knew the answer to her question, and so did she.
Even if she had told him she was with child, he wouldn’t have remained in the Absaroka village when winter was over. He was too fiddle-footed for that. There were too many hills he hadn’t seen the other side of, too many trails he hadn’t followed to see where they would take him.
“Damn it—”
She shook her head to stop him. “I knew the sort of man you were. The sort of man you are. You grow older, Preacher, but you never truly change.”
“I ain’t so sure about that.”
“I am. That is why, when Hawk and I left our village, we came to look for you. I knew you would still be the same man, and if anyone can help us, it is you, Preacher.”
“Hold on, hold on. Back up a mite. You said before you were lookin’ for me. Did you really think you’d just run into me, out here in the middle of nowhere?” He leaned his head a little to the side to indicate the vast, sweeping wilderness around them.
She smiled again. “It was not a matter of trusting completely to the Great Spirit to guide us to you. I knew you were headed in this direction. One moon ago, I spoke to a man called Nafziger.”
Preacher grunted. Otto Nafziger was another trapper, a friend even though Preacher saw him only two or three times a year and some years not at all. “I run into Otto down on the Cimarron a while back,” he said. “Don’t recollect for sure, but I might’ve mentioned somethin’ to him about tryin’ my luck in these parts this year.”
“Yes,” Birdie said, nodding. “He is a good man and has visited our village before. I asked him about you.”
“Because you were tryin’ to find me?”
A shadow passed over her face as she shook her head. “Not then. Not yet. I ask all the trappers who pass through our village about you, to make sure you are alive and healthy.”
“Now hold on a minute,” Preacher said. “You never married up with some other fella and had more young’uns with him?”
“Many asked me, but I always refused.”
“Well . . . hell!” Preacher said as frustration welled up inside him. “I never meant for that to happen. You shoulda just forgot about me and gone on with your life.”
“How could I do that when . . . ?” She turned and looked at Hawk, and the silence as her voice trailed off was eloquent.
Hawk broke that silence. “Is it not enough? You talk and talk and talk, while the Blackfoot gets away!” He was right about that.
The wounded man who had disappeared into the trees was probably a good distance away. Preacher had intended to go after him, catch up, and kill him, but he’d gotten distracted by Birdie.
His practical side rose up in him again as he said, “I reckon those fellas were part of a bigger war party?”
“At least four times as many as the fingers on both hands,” Birdie replied. “They split up to search for us. Tall Bull’s men must have seen us leaving the village, and he believes we seek help.” She paused. “He is right about that. We sought you, Preacher.”
“Tall Bull.” Preacher knew the name.
Tall Bull was a Blackfoot war chief who’d been making some noise in recent years, gathering followers to him and becoming more powerful in the tribe. Preacher had believed his stomping grounds to be north of there.
As soon as he had laid eyes on the men chasing Bird in the Tree and Hawk That Soars, he had recognized them as Blackfoot. That was why he hadn’t hesitated to jump into the fight, even though he hadn’t known who they were pursuing. He had figured if the Blackfeet were after them, he was on their side, whoever they were.
That assumption had been borne out, in spades.
“What does Tall Bull have against your village?” Preacher asked.
“We are Absaroka,” Birdie said. “Does he need any other reason to attack us?”
“No, I reckon not.”
“Many bands of our people have left these mountains and have moved south and east. Gray Feather will not go. He says we will stay where we have been and that Tall Bull will not force us from our home.”
Preacher remembered Gray Feather. The man had been a stalwart young warrior back when Preacher had wintered with the band of Absaroka. From what Birdie said, Gray Feather must have assumed leadership of the band and become their chief at some point in the time that had passed.
Preacher could believe that. “Tall Bull’s tryin’ to extend the Blackfoot huntin’ grounds down here and push out all the other tribes,” he guessed.
Birdie just nodded.
Hawk said, “We will fight him. We will kill him!”
Preacher looked at him. “You handled yourself pretty good in that fight, youngster. I was impressed. But you can’t take on an entire Blackfoot war party by yourself.”
Birdie put her hand on his arm. “That is why we want you to help us, Preacher.”
“Just how many Blackfeet do you reckon I can kill at one time, anyway?”
Hawk made a disgusted noise. “I told you we were wasting our time searching for this man. We should have stayed in the village to help there. But you would not listen.”
Preacher pointed a finger at the young man. “Hold on there. You shouldn’t be talkin’ to your ma like that. She deserves your respect.”
“Why?” Hawk’s lip curled. “For lying with a white man and pining for him ever since?”
A swift rush of anger went through Preacher. He took a step toward Hawk and began, “You’d better hush that mouth o’ yours—”
“Preacher, stop.” Bird in the Tree moved between them. “Hawk, be quiet.”
“I will not be told what to do by a woman,” the young man said.
“You better listen to your ma,” Preacher told him, tight-lipped. “She knows what she’s talkin’ about.”
Again the youngster blew out a contemptuous breath. He turned away.
“Listen, Birdie,” Preacher said, “I’ll help you and your people. Don’t think for a second I won’t. Dependin’ on how big that war party is, it may take a while to kill ’em all. That’s all I was sayin’.”
She laughed. “As I said, Preacher, you never truly change.”
“Let
’s head back to your village.”
“What about your trapping?”
“That can wait until after we’ve dealt with Tall Bull.” He looked around and realized Dog was nowhere in sight. Knowing the big cur, he had gone after the wounded Blackfoot. Preacher smiled grimly. Chances were, the man hadn’t gotten far if Dog was after him.
Preacher whistled, but Dog didn’t show up. Since Dog could hold his own against any critter, whether it went on two legs or four, Preacher wasn’t worried.
He waded across the creek to retrieve his rifle and pistols and reloaded all the weapons. Birdie went with him, but Hawk stayed on the other side of the stream, standing with his arms folded across his chest and a frown on his face.
“Does he always go around all wrathy like a possum?” Preacher asked quietly.
“He has a young man’s pride,” Birdie answered, her own voice low enough that only Preacher could hear. “He wanted to stay in the village so he could fight if Tall Bull and his warriors came back, but he knew I was coming to look for you and would not let me travel alone.” She paused. “That is not all . . .”
“I reckon he holds a grudge against me ’cause I wasn’t around while he was growin’ up. And because I’m white.”
“Both of those things have caused him pain.”
“Well, I wouldn’t wish for him to be hurtin’ because of me, but I can’t do nothin’ about what I am. I’m a fiddle-footed white man, and that’s all I am.”
Birdie looked him in the eyes. “Perhaps not all.”
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J. A. Johnstone on William W. Johnstone “When the Truth Becomes Legend”
William W. Johnstone was born in southern Missouri, the youngest of four children. He was raised with strong moral and family values by his minister father, and tutored by his schoolteacher mother. Despite this, he quit school at age fifteen.
“I have the highest respect for education,” he says, “but such is the folly of youth, and wanting to see the world beyond the four walls and the blackboard.”
True to this vow, Bill attempted to enlist in the French Foreign Legion (“I saw Gary Cooper in Beau Geste when I was a kid and I thought the French Foreign Legion would be fun”) but was rejected, thankfully, for being underage. Instead, he joined a traveling carnival and did all kinds of odd jobs. It was listening to the veteran carny folk, some of whom had been on the circuit since the late 1800s, telling amazing tales about their experiences, that planted the storytelling seed in Bill’s imagination.
“They were mostly honest people, despite the bad reputation traveling carny shows had back then,” Bill remembers. “Of course, there were exceptions. There was one guy named Picky, who got that name because he was a master pickpocket. He could steal a man’s socks right off his feet without him knowing. Believe me, Picky got us chased out of more than a few towns.”
After a few months of this grueling existence, Bill returned home and finished high school. Next came stints as a deputy sheriff in the Tallulah, Louisiana, Sheriff’s Department, followed by a hitch in the U.S. Army. Then he began a career in radio broadcasting at KTLD in Tallulah, which would last sixteen years. It was there that he fine-tuned his storytelling skills. He turned to writing in 1970, but it wouldn’t be until 1979 that his first novel, The Devil’s Kiss, was published. Thus began the full-time writing career of William W. Johnstone. He wrote horror (The Uninvited), thrillers (The Last of the Dog Team), even a romance novel or two. Then, in February 1983, Out of the Ashes was published. Searching for his missing family in a post-apocalyptic America, rebel mercenary and patriot Ben Raines is united with the civilians of the Resistance forces and moves to the forefront of a revolution for the nation’s future.
Out of the Ashes was a smash. The series would continue for the next twenty years, winning Bill three generations of fans all over the world. The series was often imitated but never duplicated. “We all tried to copy the Ashes series,” said one publishing executive, “but Bill’s uncanny ability, both then and now, to predict in which direction the political winds were blowing brought a certain immediacy to the table no one else could capture.” The Ashes series would end its run with more than thirty-four books and twenty million copies in print, making it one of the most successful men’s action series in American book publishing. (The Ashes series also, Bill notes with a touch of pride, got him on the FBI’s Watch List for its less than flattering portrayal of spineless politicians and the growing power of big government over our lives, among other things. In that respect, I often find myself saying, “Bill was years ahead of his time.”)
Always steps ahead of the political curve, Bill’s recent thrillers, written with myself, include Vengeance Is Mine, Invasion USA, Border War, Jackknife, Remember the Alamo, Home Invasion, Phoenix Rising, The Blood of Patriots, The Bleeding Edge, and the upcoming Suicide Mission.
It is with the western, though, that Bill found his greatest success. His westerns propelled him onto both the USA Today and the New York Times bestseller lists.
Bill’s western series include The Mountain Man, Matt Jensen, the Last Mountain Man, Preacher, The Family Jensen, Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter, Eagles, MacCallister (an Eagles spin-off), Sidewinders, The Brothers O’Brien, Sixkiller, Blood Bond, The Last Gunfighter, and the upcoming new series Flintlock and The Trail West. May 2013 saw the hardcover western Butch Cassidy, The Lost Years.
“The Western,” Bill says, “is one of the few true art forms that is one hundred percent American. I liken the Western as America’s version of England’s Arthurian legends, like the Knights of the Round Table, or Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Starting with the 1902 publication of The Virginian by Owen Wister, and followed by the greats like Zane Grey, Max Brand, Ernest Haycox, and of course Louis L’Amour, the Western has helped to shape the cultural landscape of America.
“I’m no goggle-eyed college academic, so when my fans ask me why the Western is as popular now as it was a century ago, I don’t offer a 200-page thesis. Instead, I can only offer this: The Western is honest. In this great country, which is suffering under the yoke of political correctness, the Western harks back to an era when justice was sure and swift. Steal a man’s horse, rustle his cattle, rob a bank, a stagecoach, or a train, you were hunted down and fitted with a hangman’s noose. One size fit all.
“Sure, we westerners are prone to a little embellishment and exaggeration and, I admit it, occasionally play a little fast and loose with the facts. But we do so for a very good reason—to enhance the enjoyment of readers.
“It was Owen Wister, in The Virginian who first coined the phrase ‘When you call me that, smile.’ Legend has it that Wister actually heard those words spoken by a deputy sheriff in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, when another poker player called him a son of a bitch.
“Did it really happen, or is it one of those myths that have passed down from one generation to the next? I honestly don’t know. But there’s a line in one of my favorite Westerns of all time, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, where the newspaper editor tells the young reporter, ‘When the truth becomes legend, print the legend.’
“These are the words I live by.”
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