Hard Ride to Hell (9780786031191) (26 page)

Randall's answer came back immediately.

“The hell with that! The Colonel died fighting, didn't he?”

“He died with a gun in his hand . . . after he killed a poor woman who never did anything except love him when he didn't deserve it!”

Randall was silent for a moment after that. When he spoke again there was a trace of regret in his voice.

“Mrs. Dayton was a good woman, all right, and maybe the Colonel was a little loco. But he was my commanding officer.”

“The war's been over for a long time!”

“The war's never over. Not for some of us . . .”

Randall's voice trailed off. After a moment, he went on, “Looks like I'm the only one still alive down here. From the sound of it, all the Colonel's men who were outside are dead, too, or at least wounded bad enough to be out of the fight. That leaves me to carry on.”

“Randall, what are you—” Smoke began.

The sound of the front door opening interrupted him. A second later, it slammed.

“He's gone out to face down Standing Rock and the rest of the Assiniboine!” Matt exclaimed.

Shots began to roar outside.

The battle, if it could be called that, lasted only a few seconds. Then silence settled down again.

“Come on,” Smoke said.

The three men, with Preacher carrying the baby and staying back a little, walked down the stairs. They had their guns in their hands, just in case. But as they stepped out of the mansion onto the verandah, they saw the weapons wouldn't be necessary. Randall's body lay crumpled on the flagstone path leading to the arched entrance. He had been shot to pieces. A soldier's death, thought Smoke . . . but still senseless.

Standing Rock and the rest of the Assiniboine came out of the shadows in front of the mansion. It looked like the rescue party had lost a few men in the fighting. Standing Rock had blood on his buckskins, but didn't seem to be badly wounded. He glanced contemptuously at Randall's body, and then hurried forward.

“My son . . . ?” he asked.

Smoke and Matt stepped aside and let Preacher move forward with Little Hawk cradled in his left arm. Standing Rock stopped short. Anybody who thought all Indians were stoic should have seen the tears of joy and relief on Standing Rock's face at that moment, Smoke thought. Carefully, he took his son from the old mountain man and hugged him.

“We will go home now,” he said, his voice choked with emotion.

“Soon,” Preacher said. “First, though, I reckon we better let the folks in the settlement know they ain't all about to be massa-creed.”

“I swear, none of us knew a blessed thing about any kidnapping,” Archibald Ingersoll said.

“Or about raiding some Indian village,” the storekeeper, Fred Springhorn, added.

The men were in the Emerald Palace Saloon, gathered there with most of the other business owners in Hammerhead, as Smoke and Matt explained what had happened tonight at the big house on the western edge of the settlement.

Smoke nodded and said, “We know that. The Colonel kept his real plans secret from everybody except Randall and the other gunmen who worked for him.”

Matt said, “Not even that fella Webster who kept books for him knew everything that was going on. When he found out the truth, he opened the office and let us go through all the files. It's pretty clear from the documents we found that Colonel Ritchie planned to take over everything, including all of your businesses, as soon as the railroad came in.”

“But what are we going to do now?” one of the men asked. “If the railroad
doesn't
come in, the town can't make it! We'll still lose everything!”

“Maybe not,” Smoke said. “I know some men who are involved with the railroads. If I tell them about this basin and how it's just sitting here waiting to boom, I've got a hunch some of them will want to come in and do it right this time, so that all of you have a chance to get rich.”

“But the Colonel's heirs will still own all the land,” Ingersoll pointed out. “We'll have to deal with them.”

Matt said, “From what we've been able to find out, the Colonel's family back East is pretty proper and respectable. Chances are, when they hear how loco he had gone, they'll want to keep the whole thing as quiet as they can. The easiest way to sweep it all under the rug will be to cooperate with you folks.”

“You're going to need some law in here as the town continues to grow, too,” Smoke said. “You'll need to hire a marshal, maybe even try to form your own county here in the basin and elect a sheriff.”

“How about one of you fellas?” Springhorn asked. “You're the ones who found out what was really goin' on and put a stop to it.”

Ingersoll nodded enthusiastically and said, “One of you can be the marshal and the other can be the sheriff!”

Smoke laughed and shook his head.

“Sorry, but I've got a wife and a ranch waiting for me down in Colorado, and I'm ready to get back to them,” he said.

“And I, uh, never stay in one place long enough to do something like that,” Matt said. He grinned. “But maybe you could get Preacher—”

“Who's talkin' about me? Get Preacher to do what?” the old mountain man asked as he came into the saloon. He had gone to the hotel to soak all the blood off in a tub of hot water, and now he was dressed in baggy trousers, a white homespun shirt, and a cowhide vest instead of his usual buckskins. The clothes were borrowed, but he had found his battered old hat in the mansion and had it perched on his head.

Matt waved a hand at Hammerhead's civic leaders and said, “These fellas are looking for a star packer, Preacher. I thought you might like to retire and take the job.”

“Retire? Pin on some tin star and strut around like I'm some sort o' highfalutin' muckety-muck? Have you done lost all the sense you was borned with? I know it weren't much to start with, but good Lord, son!”

Smoke and Matt each took hold of one of Preacher's arms and steered him toward the bat wings. Smoke smiled back over his shoulder and told the townspeople, “I reckon you can assume he's not interested in the job, either.”

Once they were outside, Preacher stopped ranting and muttering. He pulled loose from Smoke and Matt and said, “What about that goldurned Indian Ring? The Colonel was mixed up with them, and they ain't gonna like it when they hear how his plans fell through.”

“They won't be able to do anything about it,” Smoke said. “I'm going to make sure the U.S. Marshal for this territory gets the whole story. He'll see to it that nobody bothers Two Bears and his people again. As for the Ring . . .” Smoke shrugged. “I guess this is one more grudge they can hold against us. It probably won't be the last one.”

Matt said, “One of these days they're liable to decide to settle all those scores.”

“Let 'em,” Preacher said. “Let those buzzards come after us and we'll hand 'em their needin's. We'll burn powder all the way to dadgum Washington if we have to!”

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 which planted the storytelling seed in Bill's imagination.

“They were 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, Louisiana, that would last sixteen years. It was here 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 the aftermath of 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 dead-on timeliness 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,” says collaborator J. A. Johnstone, “Bill was years ahead of his time.”)

Always steps ahead of the political curve, Bill's recent thrillers, written with J. A. Johnstone, 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 and propelled him onto both the
USA Today
and the
New York Times
bestseller lists.

Bill's western series, co-authored by J. A. Johnstone, 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.
Coming in May 2013 is 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.”

PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

 

Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018

Copyright © 2013 William W. Johnstone

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

 

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone's outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone's superb storytelling.

 

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

 

PINNACLE BOOKS and the Pinnacle logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off. The WWJ steer head logo is a trademark of Kensington Publishing Corp.

ISBN: 978-0-7860-3118-4

 

 

First electronic edition: May 2013

ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3119-1
ISBN-10: 0-7860-3119-0