The Last Mountain Man
An [
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
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
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.
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
