The First Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone [Johnstone, William W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-04-21T04:00:00+00:00

4

Preacher’s yell startled them all. When he shot a big lard-butted, pus-gutted ruffian in the belly with his .54 Hawken, that really got their attention. The outlaw folded up like he’d been kicked by a mule and hit the ground, squallin’ and bellerin’, both hands holding his tore-up belly.

Preacher fired his double-shotted pistol and the muzzle exploded in fire and smoke. Both balls struck Rod in the face, and suddenly the outlaw no longer had a face. He fell back dead without uttering a sound.

Preacher dropped his Hawken and jerked out a pistol. It misfired and he found himself acing two pistols ready to discharge. Preacher leaped back into the brush just as the outlaws fired. He rolled fast, then came to his feet, holding his last charged pistol.

One of the two remaining outlaws threw good sense to the breeze and came hollering and crashing and cussing into the brush after the mountain man. Preacher opened him up from belly to gullet with his knife. He wiped the blade on the dying man’s jacket and charged his weapons. He took his time, working fast but carefully. The dying man watched him and used some of his last breath.

“He’s here, Jason!” he managed to gasp. “He done me in, I say. Oh, it hurts something fierce.”

Preacher glanced at him and winked. “Have a pleasant journey to hell, child-raper.”

“Damn your cold black heart!”

But Preacher was gone, slithering away soundlessly, working his way north of the last man on the trail, who, by now, must be getting real nervous.

“Who are you?” the last outlaw shouted. “Some brigand? Hell, join us. They’s no point in anymore shootin’.”

Preacher was standing about twenty yards from the man, by a tree. The man he’d belly shot with the Hawken was jerking and crying on the ground. But his cries were becoming weaker.

“It’s Preacher!” the outlaw Preacher had opened up with his knife hollered weakly. “I knowed I’d seen him somewheres afore. Kill him for me, Jason. Avenge me, boy. Avenge your old partner!”

Preacher lifted his freshly charged and cocked pistol. “Yeah, Jason,” he said. “Why don’t you do that?”

Jason whirled, his face pale with fright and with a very nervous trigger finger. His shot went wide. Preacher’s did not. Preacher coolly fired, the ball striking the young man in the chest. He screamed, dropped his pistol, and went down, both hands holding his bloody chest, covering the mortal wound.

Preacher charged his pistol, stood for a moment listening, and only then slowly walked over to the young man, guessing him to be in his early twenties. He stood over the man, his tanned and rugged face as set and hard as his eyes. “Gonna be a big tough outlaw, huh, boy? Didn’t quite work out the way you had it planned, did it?”

“The old Devil take you!” the young man gasped. “Damn you to the pits of hell for killin’ me.”

Preacher snorted. “Well, if it wasn’t me that put a ball in you it’d been someone else, I reckon.

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