Johnstone, W.: Last Mountain Man

The Last Mountain Man

William W. Johnstone

An [ e - reads ] Book

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, scanning or any information storage retrieval system, without explicit permission in writing from the Author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 1984 by William W. Johnstone

First e-reads publication 1999

www.e-reads.com

ISBN 0-7592-0455-1

Author Biography

Bill Johnstone has been the leading author in Kensington’s line of men’s adventure fiction for more than 25 years. Besides the four long-running adventure series (“Mountain Man,” “The First Mountain Man,” “Ashes” and “Eagles”) he has also written more than a dozen novels on suspense and horror themes. Always on the cutting edge, Johnstone has had his own author website for several years now. He lives in Shrevesport, Louisiana.

Other works by William W. Johnstone also available in e-reads editions

Out of the Ashes

We were victims of circumstances. We were drove to it.

Cole Younger, 1876

Author’s note: The mountains and valleys and creeks and springs described in this novel are real. The rendezvous of aging mountain men at Bent’s Fort reportedly did take place around 1865. The grave with the gold buried alongside the man supposedly exists, but it is not at Brown’s Hole. To the best of my knowledge there is no town in Idaho called Bury. The story is pure Western fiction, and any resemblance to actual living persons is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Epilogue

The Last Mountain Man

Prologue

He was sixteen when his father returned from that bloody insurrection known to the North as the Civil War. The War Between the States to those who wore the gray.

Kirby Jensen was almost a man grown at sixteen, for he had worked the farm during his father’s absence, taking over all the work when his mother fell ill and was confined to bed.

And it had been backbreaking work, attempting to scratch a living out of the rocky Ozark Mountain earth of southwestern Missouri. There never was enough food. The boy was thin, but rawhide tough, for the work had hardened his muscles and the pure act of survival had sharpened his mind. His hands were large and callused from using an axe, handling trace chains on the mule team, and manhandling rocks from the rolling acres of land he, and he alone, had farmed since age twelve.

It was June, 1865; the war had been over and done for better than two months. If his father was coming home, he should be along anytime, now. If he was coming home.

Kirby wondered what his Pa would say when he learned his daughter had run off with a peddler? He wondered if he knew his oldest boy was dead? And he wondered what his reaction would be when Kirby told him of Ma’s dying?

The plow hit a rock and jolted the boy back to his surroundings, popping his teeth together and wrenching his arms.

The boy swore. Made him feel more grown-up to cuss a little.

He unhooked the plow, running the lines through the eyes of the singletree, and left the plow sitting in the middle of the field. He was late getting the crops in, but no later than anyone else in the hollows and valleys of this part of Missouri. The rains had come, and stayed, making field work impossible. But he had to try to get something up.

It was a matter of survival.

Folding and shortening the traces, Kirby jumped on the back of one of the big Missouri Reds, the one called Ange, and kicked the mule into movement. It really didn’t make any difference how much you kicked ol’ Ange, for the mule would prod along at its own pace, oblivious to the thumping heels in its side. But if you kicked too much, ol’ Ange would dump a body on his butt, then stand over you and bray, kind of like mule laughter. Made you feel like a fool.

Then you had a devil of a time getting back on Ange.

Kirby plodded down the turn row on the east side of the field. Dust from the road caught his eyes. One rider pulling up to the house, leading a saddleless, riderless horse. A bay. The boy touched the smooth butt of the Navy .36 stuck behind his wide belt. A man just couldn’t be too careful these days, what with some of those Kansas Jayhawkers still around, killing and looting and raping. But, he reminded himself, some of the Missouri Redlegs were just as bad as the Jayhawkers. Seems like war brought out the poison in some and the good in others.

Kirby’s father hadn’t held much with slavery, but he did feel a state had a right to set and uphold its own laws, so he had ridden off to fight with the Gray. His Pa’s brother, up in Iowa, whom Kirby had not seen but one time in his life, was a farmer, like most of the Jensen men. But he had marched off to fight with the Blue. He had gotten killed, so Kirby had heard, in Chancellorsville, back in ’63.

At sixteen, Kirby didn’t believe a man had the right to keep another in chains, as a slave, although there hadn’t been much of that in this part of Missouri: everybody was too poor, just a day to day struggle keeping body and soul together.

But he did believe, like this father, probably because of his father, that the government in far-off Washington on the river didn’t have the right to tell a state what it could and couldn’t do in all matters.

Didn’t seem right.

Had Kirby been old enough, and not had his Ma to look after, he would have ridden for the Gray.

As Ange plodded closer to the house, Kirby could make out the figure in the front yard. It was his father.

One

“Boy,” Emmett Jensen said looking at his son, “I swear you’ve grown two feet.”

Kirby had slid off Ange and walked to the man. “You’ve been gone four years, Pa.” He wanted to throw his arms around his Pa, but didn’t, ’cause his Pa didn’t hold with a lot of touching between men. Kirby stuck out his hand and his Pa shook it.

“Strong, too,” Emmett commented.

“Thank you, Pa.”

“Crops is late, Kirby.”

“Yes, sir. Rains come and stayed.”

“I wasn’t faultin’ you, boy.” Emmett let his eyes sweep the land. He coughed, a dry hacking. “I seen a cross on the hill overlookin’ the creek. Would that be your Ma?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When’d she pass?”

“Spring of last year. Doc Blanchard said it was her lungs and a bad heart.” And grief, the boy thought, but kept that to himself.

“She go hard?”

“No, sir. Went on in her sleep. I found her the next morning when I brung her coffee and grits.”

“Good coffee’s scarce. What’d you do with the coffee?”

“Drank it,” the boy replied honestly. “Then went to get the doc.”

“Right nice service?”

“Folks come from all over to see her off.”

Emmett cleared his throat and then coughed. “Well, I think I’ll go up to the hill and sit with your ma for a time. You put up them horses and rub them down. We’ll talk over supper.”