Forty Guns West (27 page)

Days later, Preacher holed up in a cabin he'd built some years back. He'd cleaned out the place, for pack rats and birds had been busy there, and then began cutting firewood for the winter ahead. He found his old scythe where he'd left it, sharpened it up with a stone, and worked for a solid week, from can see to can't see, cutting forage for his horses. He worked himself hard so he would not have time to think about what happened to the royalty, even though he knew perfectly well there was nothing he could have done to prevent it.

The entire Indian nation had put a death sentence on the heads of the man-hunters as soon as they learned of the massacre of Wind Chaser and his band. There was no way any of them would have been able to leave the mountains. And Preacher doubted that any of the men he'd sent packing had made it very far out. He didn't have a guilty conscience about what had happened, he just didn't want to think about it.

When his domestic chores were done, Preacher went hunting and started jerking and smoking the meat. He set out fish traps and began smoking his catch. He picked berries to make pemmican and dug up tubers and wild onions for the cellar. When he had done all he could do in preparation for winter, he relaxed. He hoped he wouldn't see a single solitary soul 'til spring. The past summer had given him a bellyful of people, both good and bad, but mostly bad. He occasionally thought of Patience and Prudence and those folks with them and wondered how they were. He knew they'd made it out of the wilderness safely, for a trapper friend of his told him that.

Preacher knew that the area west of the Mississippi was going to run red with blood very soon. As pioneer families began moving onto the land, the Indians were going to fight to preserve their way of life. It was going to be a terrible time for many years to come. But Preacher didn't know how he could do anything to prevent the blood from being spilled.

One fall afternoon Preacher sat on the porch, smoking his pipe and watching the sun go down. A family of wolves who were denned not far away had begun coming around and Preacher recognized both the male and his mate from a year or so back. They came around this evening to check on him.

“Howdy,” he said to them, and then was amused in watching the young in their rough and tumble play. “Life's pretty good, ain't it?”

The wolves sat in front of the porch, cocked their heads to one side and looked at him.

“Yeah,” Preacher said. “Life is pretty darned good. If a man just knows how to live it and rolls with the flow.”

New York Times
and
USA Today
Bestselling Authors
William W. Johnstone
And J. A. Johnstone

 

Smoke Jensen was a towering Western hero. Now his
two freewheeling
,
long-lost nephews, Ace and Chance Jensen
,
are blazing a legendary trail of their own.

 

Riverboat gambling is a blast, until hotheaded
Chance finds out just what he won in his final hand
against a Missouri River gambler named Haggarty.
Chance's “prize” is a beautiful Chinese slave girl
named Ling. The twins want to set Ling free
and keep their cash, but at Fort Benton, Ling gives
them the slip, robbing them blind. When they hunt
her down in Rimfire, Montana, she's with
Haggarty, lining up their next mark.

 

 

Ace and Chance want payback. So does hard case
Leo Belmont, who's come all the way from
San Francisco with a grudge and a couple of
kill-crazy hired guns. Belmont wants revenge,
and Ace and Chance are in the way.

 

 

Soon the boys are fighting alongside Ling and
Haggarty. Because it doesn't matter now who's right
and who's wrong—blazing guns and flying lead
are laying down the law ...

 

 

 

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