Showing results by author "J. A. Johnstone" in All Categories

Preacher is heading home to the mountains when he's approached by a wealthy European with an unusual proposition. He wants the legendary mountain man to track down his missing cousin—a reckless young woman who fled to America with her lover—and he's willing to pay a small fortune to find her. Preacher isn't one to get mixed up in the affairs of fancy foreigners, but he reluctantly agrees. The search is on. Striking westward from St. Louis, Preacher quickly begins to suspect that this search party is doomed. And this trail will lead to some very dead ends.

A Rocky Mountain winter has left Breck reeling from the carnage unleashed by bloodthirsty trapper Judd Carnahan - and readying a quest for vengeance as ruthless as their prey. It gets even deadlier when Carnahan lays siege to a trading post on the Yellowstone River. He's left the owner dead and kidnapped a pretty hostage who can turn a nice profit once he puts her to work.

Long ago, the legendary trapper known as Preacher took shelter with the Absaroka, and fell in love with a girl called Bird in the Tree. Twenty years later, he rescues a woman and her son from an ambush by the hated Blackfoot. The woman is Birdie, and the valiant young warrior is Hawk That Soars — Preacher’s son. Now the greatest fighter on the frontier is about to go to war, to protect a family he never knew he had.

Once upon a time in the Old West, Buck Trammel was a Pinkerton agent with a promising future. But after a tragic incident in a case gone wrong, he struck out for the wide-open spaces of Wichita, Kansas. Working as a bouncer at the Gilded Lily Saloon, he hopes to stay out of trouble. But soon enough, his gun skills are put to the test. The Bower gang shows up, turning a friendly card game with a Wyoming cattle baron into a killer-takes-all shooting match. Buck saves the cattle baron's life, but at the cost of two Bower men. That's when Deputy Wyatt Earp arrives.

Crater City, New Mexico, is a bustling mining town brimming with the stench of men hungry to get rich the old fashioned way - by killing the competition. Dennis Conroy is the owner of the biggest saloon in town, and he needs a few good sharpshooters to help protect surveyors laying out a route for a spur line before his rival Hugh Thornton beats him to it. Joe Buckhorn's handy with a gun, so he takes the job. Against his best advice, he'll also take a liking to the boss's daughter. Worse, Buckhorn starts wondering exactly what kind of man he's working for.

William W. Johnstone and J. A. Johnstone present Book 52 in the Mountain Man series.

Preacher and Hawk ride out of the Rockies and into St. Louis, loaded with furs. It’s Hawk’s first trip to civilization and the moment he lays eyes on young Chessie Dayton, he’s lost in more ways than one. When Chessie unwisely signs on for a gold-hungry expedition into the lawless mountains, Hawk convinces Preacher to trail the outfit because they’re all headed straight to the sacred Indian grounds known as the Black Hills — a land of no return. To come out of it alive a lot of people will have to die.

The Scottish Highlands, 1885. Two men, brandishing knives, attack a young woman outside a pub. Duff MacAllister steps in and saves her - killing one of the assailants. Big mistake. The attacker was the sheriff's son, and now MacAllister is marked for death. His only hope: America. Here, in the sprawling land of dreams, Duff hopes to start a new life with his American cousins. Unfortunately, the sheriff's deputies are tracking him down - with nine of the deadliest cutthroats money can buy.

In Tennessee, 17-year-old Breckinridge Wallace knew the laws of nature. When his life was in danger, he showed a fearless instinct to fight back. Killing a thug who was sent to kill him got Breckinridge exiled from his Smoky Mountain home. Brutally wounding an Indian attacker earned him an enemy for life....

Meet Hunter Buchanon, a towering mountain of a man who learned how to track prey in Georgia, kill in the Civil War, and prospect in the Black Hills of Dakota. Now he's trying to live a peaceful gun-free life - but fate has other plans for him. When Hunter Buchanon rescued a wounded coyote pup - and named him Bobby Lee - he had no idea the cute little varmint would grow up to be such a loyal companion.

In a town like Chugwater, Wyoming, you know who your friends are, who your enemies are, and who your kill-crazy maniacs are. For Duff MacCallister, the last category belongs to Johnny Taylor and his gang. Duff has wrestled with this polecat before, and knows that his bite is worse than his smell. But when Taylor's gang tries to rob a bank - and Duff manages to shoot one and arrest Taylor's brother - the outraged outlaw raises a stink straight out of hell. First, he begins to randomly slaughter innocent townsfolk one by one.

As the father of a young Crow tribesman, Preacher would like nothing more than to see the long-time natives and newly arrived settlers live together in peace. Then, the killing starts.... As a family man and frontiersman, Jamie Ian MacCallister is more than happy to help the officers at Fort Kearny negotiate a peace treaty with the Crow nation. Until it all goes to hell.... This is not the American dream they were looking for. This is a nightmare. A brutal, blood-drenched frontier war that two heroic men must fight and win - or one struggling nation will never come together.

Red Ryan should've known this job would be trouble. The first stop is a ghost town and the cargo is a coffin. But things start to look a little brighter when Red and his stage guard Buttons Muldoon deliver the corpse to a ranch run by the beautiful Luna Talbot. Luna asks the boys to help them find the Lucky Cuss Gold Mine, using a map tucked inside the dead man's pocket. Red has a feeling they're playing with fire. Especially when the map leads them straight into crossfire of a ferocious range war.

He's the son of a cattle rancher. A restless young dreamer who, under normal circumstances, would follow in his father's footsteps. Normal, however, is not his style. Like his famous grandfather and namesake Perley Gates - a hell-raising mountain man with a heavenly name - young Perley wants adventure, excitement, and freedom. And like his grandfather before him, he will find his dream - in the untamed wilds of a lawless frontier. That dream though might just become a nightmare....

A wagon train of pioneers is struggling Westward toward Oregon through the howling winter and a band of Arikara warriors are hot on their trail. Little do the Arikaras suspect that they're about to come face-to-face and gun-to-gun with a ferocious fight they never expected, courtesy of the wily mountain man called Preacher. As Preacher struggles to bring the settlers to safety, he learns the real reason they were attacked and begins to suspect that the secrets they've been keeping equal a worse kind of danger.

The last days of the Civil War. With Richmond under siege, Confederate soldier Luke Jensen is assigned the task of smuggling gold out of the city before the Yankees get their hands on it — when he is ambushed and robbed by four deserters, shot in the back, and left for dead. Taken in by a Georgia farmer and his beautiful daughter, Luke is nursed back to health. Though crippled, he hopes to reunite with his long-lost brother Smoke, but a growing romance keeps him on the farm.

After spending most of his young life driving cattle from Texas to Nevada, Will Tanner is ready to wash the trail dust from his throat. Maybe it was fate that brought him to the Morning Glory Saloon on the border of Indian Territory - or just plain bad luck - because right after his sits down three rough-looking characters walk into the bar with vengeance in their eyes, guns at their sides...and fingers on their triggers. The trio's target is the famous US Deputy Marshal Dove who arrested one of their kin - and who's sitting in the bar near Will Tanner.

From America's greatest storytellers comes a bold new chapter in the Will Tanner saga, an epic quest for justice at the crossroads of history - in a crossfire of bullets... US Deputy Marshal Will Tanner earned his badge the old-fashioned way. He shot the bad guys, saved the good guys, and won the fear and respect of everyone in between. That's how legends are born. But when he visits a friend at his ranch and ends up confronting a trigger-happy horse thief, Will earns the wrath of the deadliest, lowlife killers west of the Mississippi. This is how legends die....

Luke Ransom was just 18 years old when he answered an ad in a St. Louis newspaper that would change his life forever. The American Fur Company needed 100 enterprising men to travel up the Missouri River - the longest in North America - all the way to its source. They would hunt and trap furs for one, two, or three years. Along the way, they would face unimaginable hardships: grueling weather, wild animals, hunger, exhaustion, and hostile attacks by the Blackfeet and Arikara. Luke Ransom was one of the brave men chosen for the job - and one of the few to survive....

They just wanted to get home for Christmas...but fate had other plans. It's December 1890. A Texas rancher named Big Jim Conyers has a deal with Scottish-born, Wyoming cattleman named Duff MacCallister. Along with Smoke and Matt Jensen, the party bears down on Dodge, Kansas, to make a cattle drive back to Forth Worth. But before they can get out of Dodge, guns go off and a rich man's son is killed.