“Loony as a monkey!” Garrett muttered.
“But dangerous as a rattlesnake.” Smoke advised. “Let’s go, boys.”
The lines of men began to walk slowly toward each other, their boots making their progress in the muddy, snowy canyon floor.
The men behind their rifles on the canyon skyline kept the muzzles of their guns trained on the outlaws.
No one called out any signals. No one spoke a word. All knew that when they were about sixty feet apart, it was time to open the dance. Rycroft’s hands jerked at the pistol butts and Beaconfield drilled him dead center just as Bothwell grabbed for his guns. Minister Morrow lifted the muzzle of his Henry and shot the outlaw through the belly, levered in another round, and finished the job.
The canyon floor roared and boomed and filled with gunsmoke as the two sides hammered at each other.
Smoke pulled both .44s, his speed enabling him to get off the first and accurate shots.
One slug turned Dagget sideways and the other slug hit Davidson in the hip, striking the big bone and knocking the man to the ground.
Smoke felt the lash of a bullet impact with his left leg. He steadied himself and continued letting the hot lead fly. He saw Dagget go down just as Davidson leveled his six-gun and fired. The bullet clipped Smoke’s right arm, stinging and drawing the blood. Smoke leveled his left-hand .44 and shot Davidson in the head, the bullet striking him just about his right eye.
Dagget was down on his knees, still fighting. Smoke walked toward the man, cocking and firing. He was close enough to see the slugs pop dirt from the man’s shirt and jacket as they struck.
Dagget suddenly rose up to one knee and his fingers loosened their hold on his guns. He fell forward on his face just as Smoke slumped against a huge boulder, his left leg suddenly aching, unable to hold his weight.
Smoke punched out empties and reloaded as the firing wound down. He watched as Pearlie emptied both Colts into the chests of two men; Minister Morrow knocked yet another outlaw to the ground with fire and lead from his Henry.
And then the canyon floor fell silent.
Somewhere a man coughed and spat. Another man groaned in deep pain. Yet another man tried to get up from the line of fallen outlaws. He tried then gave it up, falling back into the boot-churned mud.
The outlaw line lay bloody and still.
“My wife told me to finish it this morning,” Smoke said, his voice seeming unnaturally loud in the sudden stillness.
“Anything my wife tells me to do, I do it,” Garrett spoke.
“Looks like we done it,” Johnny summed it up.
27
Beaconfield and Garrett called in some of their hands and the outlaws were buried in a mass grave. Reverend Ralph Morrow spoke a few words over the gravesite.
Damn few words.
Smoke tied off the wound in his leg and the men swung into the saddles. This part of Colorado was peaceful again, for a time.
The men turned their horses and headed for home. No one looked back at the now-quiet-but-once-roaring-and-bloody canyon floor. No one would return to mark the massive grave. The men of the posse had left the outlaws’ guns on top of the mound of fresh earth.
Marker enough.
York would make it, but it would be a long, slow healing time. But as Dr. Spalding pointed out, Martha would make a fine nurse.
York had been ambushed in the late afternoon, but he’d somehow managed to stay in the saddle and finally made the ranch. He had crawled into some hay by the barn and that had probably saved his life.
“We’ll call our ranch the Circle BM,” York told her.
Martha thought about that. “No,” she said with a smile. “Let’s call it the Circle YM. It…sounds a little bit better.”
Spring came to the High Lonesome, and with the coming of the renewal of the cycle, a peaceful warm breeze blew across the meadows and the canyons and the homes of those who chose to brave the high country, to carve out their destiny, working the land, moving the cattle, raising their families, and trying their best to live their lives as decently and as kindly as the circumstances would permit them.
Martha would be hired as the new schoolmarm, and in the summer, she and York would wed. Her teaching would be interrupted every now and then, for they would have six children.
Six to add to Smoke and Sally’s five.
Five?
Yes, but that’s another story…along the trail of the last mountain man.
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2007 by Kensington Publishing Corp.
Trail of the Mountain Man copyright © 1987 by William W. Johnstone
Revenge of the Mountain Man copyright © 1988 by 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.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-2641-8
*The Last Mountain Man
*Return of the Mountain Man
*The Last Mountain Man
*The Last Mountain Man
*Return of the Mountain Man
Table of Contents
TRAIL OF THE MOUNTAIN MAN
Book One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Book Two
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
REVENGE OF THE MOUNTAIN MAN
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27