PRAISE FOR
THE NOVELS OF
TERRY C. JOHNSTON
DANCE ON THE WIND
“A good book … not only gives readers a wonderful story, but also provides vivid slices of history that surround the colorful characters.”
—Dee Brown, author of
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
“Packed with people, action and emotion … makes you wish it would never end.”
—Clive Cussler
WINTER RAIN
“Some of the finest depictions of Indian warfare I have ever read. Johnston’s romantic vision imbues the early West with an aching beauty that moderns can only dream of.”
—Richard S. Wheeler, author of Two Medicine River
CRY OF THE HAWK
“This novel has the epic sweep of the frontier built into it.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Will stain the reader with grease, blood, and smoke.”
—Kirkus Reviews
THE SON OF THE PLAINS TRILOGY
“Terry Johnston is the genuine article…. His Custer trilogy is proving this significant point, just as his Indian wars and mountain man boooks prove it. I admire his power and invention as a writer, but I admire his love and faith in history just as much.”
—Will Henry, author of From Where the Sun Now Stands
CARRY THE WIND, BORDERLORDS, and ONE-EYED DREAM
“Johnston’s books are action-packed … a remarkably fine blend of arduous historical research and proficient use of language … lively, lusty, fascinating.”
—Gazette-Telegraph, Colorado Springs
“Rich and fascinating … There is a genuine flavor of the period and of the men who made it what it was.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“Slick with survival-and-gore heroics and thick with Northwest-wilderness period detail (1820–40), this gutsy adventure-entertainment is also larded with just the right amounts of frontier sentiment.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Johnston offers memorable characters, a great deal of history and lore about the Indians and pioneers of the period, and a deep insight into human nature, Indian or white.”
—Booklist
BOOKS BY TERRY C. JOHNSTON
Cry of the Hawk
Winter Rain
Dream Catcher
Carry the Wind
Borderlords
One-Eyed Dream
Dance on the Wind
Buffalo Palace
Crack in the Sky
Ride the Moon Down
Death Rattle
SONS OF THE PLAINS NOVELS
Long Winter Gone
Seize the Sky
Whisper of the Wolf
THE PLAINSMEN NOVELS
Sioux Dawn
Red Cloud’s Revenge
The Stalkers
Black Sun
Devil’s Backbone
Shadow Riders
Dying Thunder
Blood Song
Reap the Whirlwind
Trumpet on the Land
Cold Day in Hell
Wolf Mountain Moon
Ashes of Heaven
Cries from the Earth
Lay the Mountains Low
For all the faith he had in me
and my vision of the old west
right from the very first,
I dedicate this novel of the time Titus Bass
reaches his beloved Shining Mountains
to
BILL GOLLIHER,
with my deepest appreciation for putting
Ol’ Scratch and Carry the Wind
in all those stores
up and down the Colorado Rockies ten long years ago.
The history of any land begins with nature, and all histories must end with nature.
—J. Frank Dobie
1
Reining away from Troost’s Livery, Titus Bass gave the jug-headed Indian pony urgent taps of his heels, pointing it down the muddy, rutted ruin of Second Street.
Puddles of rain glittered as the sun continued its leisurely rise, the surface of each tiny pool left behind by last night’s rain reflecting rose light like broken panes of glass scattered here and there among the heaps of wheel-cut ruts and piles of dung gone cold. Shadows still cloaked nearly all of St. Louis, save for the tallest rooftops gently steaming as they warmed.
Instead of heading directly north, he hurried south out of town, downriver some four miles until he reached the shady glen far from the clutter of settlement and folk. Far from the clatter of man’s comings and goings. Someplace far from being underfoot. After all this time Titus was again gratified at the utter peace he sensed there as he halted, dismounted, and tied the two animals off to one of the trees ringing the glade. Plodding quietly in his thick-soled boots across the grassy carpet grown lush already this early spring, he had no trouble locating the mound. Stopping a few feet away, he took it in, finding many of the wildflowers he had transplanted nearly a year before budding once again with renewed life here above the old trapper’s resting place.
Down in this grove the shadows lingered long of a morning. And the damp mist clung in among the trees, wispy among the climbing ivy and grape. Eventually, Titus inched forward, stopping at the foot of the grave.
“Isaac. It’s me: Titus,” he said barely above a whisper, the way a man might first address someone he found sleeping. “I come … come here to tell you my fare-thees, Isaac. I’m bound away—for where the two of us was counting on going together. Out yondering to them prerras and far mountains you told me of again and again.”
Then he realized and suddenly snatched the floppy felt hat from his head, dropping his eyes as if in apology for his discourteous oversight.
“Wish you was going along,” Bass continued. “Probably asking yourself why I ain’t gone already, ain’cha? So let me tell you that you being here—dead and buried—that’s the onliest reason I ain’t gone afore now. There I was, planning all the time on tagging ’long with you … then you go and get yourself kill’t. That was—hell, it felt just like one of them old brood mares I was shoeing for Troost gone and kicked me right in the gut.”
He dropped the hat onto the foot of the grave there among the profusion of newly emerging wildflowers and slowly went to his knees. Placing one palm flat on the grave, Titus continued.
“Took me some time to get over your dying, Isaac Washburn. Pained me like few other things ever pained me afore in my life. I was counting on something so hard—then you go and act the idjit and you’re gone … gone along with my dreams of ever getting to them Shining Mountains you seen with your own eyes.”