William Johnstone - Butchery of the Mountain Man

“I’m no goggle-eyed college academic, so when my fans ask me why the Western is as popular now as it was a century ago, I don’t offer a 200-page thesis. Instead, I can only offer this: The Western is honest. In this great country, which is suffering under the yoke of political correctness, the Western harks back to an era when justice was sure and swift. Steal a man’s horse, rustle his cattle, rob a bank, a stagecoach, or a train, you were hunted down and fitted with a hangman’s noose. One size fit all.

“Sure, we westerners are prone to a little embellishment and exaggeration and, I admit it, occasionally play a little fast and loose with the facts. But we do so for a very good reason—to enhance the enjoyment of readers.

“It was Owen Wister, in The Virginian who first coined the phrase ‘When you call me that, smile.’ Legend has it that Wister actually heard those words spoken by a deputy sheriff in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, when another poker player called him a son-of-a-bitch.

“Did it really happen, or is it one of those myths that have passed down from one generation to the next? I honestly don’t know. But there’s a line in one of my favorite Westerns of all time, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, where the newspaper editor tells the young reporter, ‘When the truth becomes legend, print the legend.’

“These are the words I live by.”

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USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

with J. A. Johnstone

Present a Blazing New Series

FLINTLOCK

He is brave, tough as leather, takes no prisoners, and has left behind a trail of deadly enemies—outlaws he’s hunted down or killed with the cold heart of a man used to violence. A feared bounty hunter and the scourge of bad men everywhere, Flintlock carries an ancient Hawken muzzle-loader, handed down to him from the mountain man who raised him. He stands as the towering hero of a new Johnstone saga.

BLOOD QUEST

Busted out of prison by an outlaw friend, Flintlock joins a hunt for a fortune—a golden bell hanging in a remote monastery. But between the smoldering ruin of his former jail cell and a treasure in the Arizona mountains there will be blood at a U.S. Army fort, a horrifying brush with Apache warriors, and a dozen wild adventures with the schemers, shootists, madmen, and lost women who find their way to Flintlock’s side. From a vicious, superstitious half-breed to the great Geronimo himself, Flintlock meets the frontier’s most murderous hardcases—many who he must find a way to kill . . .

On sale now, wherever Pinnacle Books are sold.

CHAPTER ONE

“I’m gonna hang you tomorrow at sunup, Sam Flintlock, an’ I can’t guarantee to break your damned neck on account of how I never hung anybody afore,” the sheriff said. “I’ll try, lay to that, but you see how it is with me.”

“The hammering stopped about an hour ago, so I figured my time was near,” Flintlock said.

“A real nice gallows, you’ll like it,” Sheriff Dave Cobb said. “An’ I’ll make sure it’s hung with red, white and blue bunting so you can go out in style. You’ll draw a crowd, Sam. If’n that makes you feel better.”

“This pissant town railroaded me into a noose, Cobb. You know it and I know it,” Flintlock said.

“Damnit, boy, you done kilt Smilin’ Dan Sedly and just about everybody in this valley was kissin’ kin o’ his. Ol’ Dan was a well-liked man.”

“He was wanted by the law for bank robbery and murder,” Flintlock said.

“Not in this town he wasn’t,” Cobb said.

The sheriff was a middle-aged man and inclined to be jolly by times. He was big in the belly and a black, spade-shaped beard spread over the lapels of a broadcloth suit coat that looked to be half as old as he was.

“No hard feelings, huh, Sam?” he said. “I mean about the hangin’ an’ all. Like I told you, I’ll do my best. I’ve been reading a book about how to set the noose an’ sich an’ I reckon I’ll get it right.”

“I got no beef against you, Cobb,” Flintlock said. “You’re the town lawman and you’ve got a job to do.”

“How old are you, young feller?” the lawman said.

“Forty. I guess.”

“Still too young to die.” Cobb sighed. “Ah well, tell you what, I’ll bring you something nice for your last meal tonight. How about steak and eggs? You like steak and eggs?”

“I don’t much care, Sheriff, but there’s one thing you can do for me.”

“Just ask fer it. I’m a giving, generous man. Dave Cobb by name, Dave Cobb by nature, I always say.”

“Let me have my grandpappy’s old Hawken rifle,” Flintlock said. “It will be a comfort to me.”

Doubt showed in Cobb’s face. “Now, I don’t know about that. That’s agin all the rules.”

“Hell, Cobb, the Hawken hasn’t been shot in thirty, forty years,” Flintlock said. “I ain’t much likely to use it to bust out of jail.”

“You’re a strange one, Sam Flintlock,” the lawman said. “Why did you carry that old gun around anyhow?”

“Call me sentimental, Cobb. It was left to me as a legacy, like.”

“See, my problem is, Sam, you could use that old long gun as a club. Bash my brains out when I wasn’t lookin’.”

“Not that rifle, I won’t. Your head is too thick, Sheriff. I might damage the stock.”

Cobb thought for a while, his shaggy black eyebrows beetling. Finally he smiled and said, “All right, I’ll bring it to you. But I see you making any fancy moves with that old Hawken, I’ll shoot your legs off so you can still live long enough to be hung. You catch my drift?”

“You have my word, Sheriff, I won’t give you any trouble.”

Cobb nodded. “Well, you’re a personable enough feller, even though you ain’t so well set up an’ all, so I’ll take you at your word.”

“I appreciate it,” Flintlock said. “See, I’m named for that Hawken.”

“Your real name Hawken, like?”

“No. My grandpappy named me for a flintlock rifle, seeing as how I never knew my pa’s name.”

“Hell, why didn’t he give you his own name, that grandpa of yourn?”

“He said every man should have his father’s name. He told me he’d call me Flintlock after the Hawken until I found my ma and she told me who my pa was and what he was called.”

“You ever find her?”

“No. I never did, but I’m still on the hunt for her. Or at least I was.”

“Your grandpa was a mountain man?”

“Yeah, he was with Bridger an’ Hugh Glass an’ them, at least for a spell. Then he helped survey the Platte and the Sweetwater with Kit Carson and Fremont.”

“Strange, restless breed they were, mountain men.”

“You could say that.”

“I’ll bring you the Hawken, but mind what I told you, about shootin’ off a part of yourself.”

“I ain’t likely to forget,” Flintlock said.

CHAPTER TWO

“Pssst . . .”

Sam Flintlock sat up on his cot, his mind cobwebbed by sleep.

“Pssst . . .”

What was that? Rats in the corners again?

“Hell, look up here, stupid.”

Flintlock rose to his feet. There was a small barred window high on the wall of his cell where a bearded face looked down at him.

“I see you’re prospering, Sammy,” the man said, grinning. “Settin’ all nice and cozy in the town hoosegow.”

Flintlock scowled. “Come to watch me hang, Abe?”

“Nah, I was just passin’ through when I saw the gallows,” Abe Roper said. “I asked who was gettin’ hung and they said a feller with a big bird tattooed on his throat that goes by the name of Sam Flintlock. I knew it had to be you. There ain’t another ranny in the West with a big bird an’ that handle.”