Ambush of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone [Johnstone, William W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Western
ISBN: 9780786014392
Publisher: Pinnacle
Published: 2003-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Smoke hadn’t remembered Johnny MacDougal’s name, but he still remembered the young man’s lifeless, cold eyes that barely held a hint of humanity in them as he shot off his mouth in the saloon that day. The boy was evidently spoiled rotten, and had never had to face up to the fact that people feared him because of his father’s wealth, not out of any respect for him or because of any doing of his own.

He raised his eyes to Sarah’s. “But his name was MacDougal and yours is . . . ”

“Mine is MacDougal too,” Sarah said. “I lied when I told your wife it was Johnson.”

Smoke sighed and drained the last of his coffee from the cup, hoping it would stay down. “Well, if Johnny was your brother, then you know how unreasonable and stupid he was when he was drinking,” Smoke said, though his gentle voice took some of the sting out of what he said.

“What?” Sarah almost screamed, stepping closer to Smoke and raising her hand as if she was about to hit him.

Smoke smiled grimly at her. “Think about it, Sarah,” he said. “How many times before had he gotten drunk and caused trouble, assaulted or hurt someone? Why, the day he forced us to draw on him, I heard he’d killed an unarmed man the week before.”

When Sarah’s face flushed, Smoke continued. “Did anyone from your family go and tell that poor man’s wife and kids you were sorry for what your brother had done, or did you just use your father’s influence to sweep it all under the rug?”

“You son of a—” Sarah began.

“And did anyone from that man’s family come out to the ranch and try and take Johnny prisoner or shoot him for what he’d done to their father?” he asked, his eyes boring into hers as he spoke.

“You know that was different,” she almost screamed. “The man drew on Johnny first . . . ” she was saying.

Smoke started to interrupt her, but his vision suddenly narrowed and everything became dark and fuzzy, and then he tipped over and fell headfirst into a deep, black pool.

Cletus rushed to his side and felt the pulse in Smoke’s neck. “He’s just fainted,” he said, looking up at Sarah. “Probably from loss of blood, though God only knows if you’ve managed to scramble his brains with that crowbar.”

“It’d serve the bastard right,” Sarah said, moving toward the fire and the coffeepot to get herself another cup. “Especially after what he said about Johnny.”

Cletus’s eyes softened with sorrow, for he knew that Sarah knew that what Jensen had said was the truth, as painful as it was for her to hear it spoken out loud.

They’d all tried to maintain the fiction that the man Johnny killed had been armed, but they’d never spoken of it, and the sheriff had covered up the truth from the townspeople. But out at the ranch they’d all known how it really went down.

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