Winter Rain

parched tongue. “A … a white man’s sc-scalp?”

“Yep.”

“Who … whose scalp is it, Jonah?”

Hook gazed evenly at the newsman. The fire crackled and popped between them, spitting fireflies of sparks into the deepening dark of that immense, all-consuming land. Tiny, iridescent shooting stars born of their wilderness fire sent spiraling skyward toward the great heavenly bodies.

“The one Gritta took herself.”

TERRY C. JOHNSTON

1947–2001

Terry C. Johnston was born on the first day of 1947 on the plains of Kansas and lived all his life in the American West. His first novel, Carry the Wind, won the Medicine Pipe Bearer’s Award from the Western Writers of America, and his subsequent books appeared on bestseller lists throughout the country. After writing more than thirty novels of the American frontier, he passed away in March 2001 in Billings, Montana. Terry’s work combined the grace and beauty of a natural storyteller with a complete dedication to historical accuracy and authenticity. He continues to bring history to life in the pages of his historical novels so that readers can live the grand adventure of the American West. While recognized as a master of the American historical novel, to family and friends Terry remained and will be remembered as a dear, loving father and husband as well as a kind, generous, and caring friend. He has gone on before us to a better place, where he will wait to welcome us in days to come.

If you would like to help carry on the legacy of Terry C. Johnston, you are invited to contribute to the

Terry C. Johnston Memorial Scholarship Fund

c/o Montana State University-Billings Foundation

1500 N. 30^th Street

Billings, MT 59101-0298

1-888-430-6782

A Preview of

RIDE THE MOON DOWN

In the sequel to Terry C. Johnston’s bestselling frontier trilogy, Carry the Wind, BorderLords, and One-Eyed Dream, readers watch the mountain man Titus Bass continue his heart-wrenching journey through the perils of the Wild West.

Ride the Moon Down is another triumph of the master of frontier fiction, Terry C. Johnston, who brings to life once more vivid slices of America’s history.

Here is a preview of the opening chapter of this fascinating novel.

The baby stirred between them.

She eventually fussed enough to bring Bass fully awake, suddenly, sweating beneath the blankets.

Without opening her eyes, the child’s mother groggily drew the infant against her breast and suckled the babe back to sleep.

Titus kicked the heavy wool horse blanket off his legs, hearing one of the horses nicker. Not sure which one of the four it was, the trapper sat up quiet as coal cotton, letting the blanket slip from his bare arms as he dragged the rifle from between his knees.

Somewhere close, out there in the dark, he heard the low warning rumble past the old dog’s throat. Bass hissed—immediately silencing Zeke.

Several moments slipped by before he heard another sound from their animals. But for the quiet breathing of mother and the ngg-ngg suckling of their daughter, the summer night lay all but silent around their camp at the base of a low ridge.

Straining to see the unseeable, Bass glanced overhead to search for the moon in that wide canopy stretching across the treetops. Moonset already come and gone. Nothing left but some puny starshine. As he blinked a third time, his groggy brain finally remembered that his vision wasn’t what it had been. For weeks now that milky cloud covering his left eye was forcing his right to work all the harder.

Then his nose suddenly captured something new on the nightwind. A smell musky and feral—an odor not all that familiar, just foreign enough that he strained his recollections to put a finger on it.

Then off to the side of camp his ears heard the padding of the dog’s big feet as Zeke moved stealthily through the stands of aspen that nearly surrounded this tiny pocket in the foothills he had found for them late yesterday afternoon.

And from farther in the darkness came another low, menacing growl—

Titus practically jumped out of his skin when she touched him, laying her fingers against his bare arm. He turned to peer back, swallowing hard, that lone eye finding Waits by the Water in what dim light seeped over them there beneath the big square of oiled Russian sheeting he had lashed between the trees should the summer sky decide to rain on them through the night.

He could hear Zeke moving again, not near so quietly this time, angling farther out from camp.

Bass laid a long finger against her lips, hoping it would tell her enough. Waits nodded slightly and kissed the finger just before he pulled it away and rocked forward onto his knees, slowly standing. Smelling. Listening.

Sure enough the old dog was in motion, growling off to his right—not where he had heard Zeke a moment before. Yonder, toward the horses at the edge of the gently sloping meadow.

Had someone, red or white, stumbled upon them camped here? he wondered as he took a first barefooted step, then listened some more. Snake country, this was—them Shoshone—though Crow were known to plunge this far south, Arapaho push in too. Had some hunting party found their tracks and followed them here against the bluff?

Every night of their journey north from Taos Bass had damn well exercised caution. They would stop late in the lengthening afternoons and water their horses, then let them graze a bit while he gathered wood for a small fire he always built directly beneath the wide overhang of some branches to disperse the smoke. Waits nursed the baby and when her tummy was full Bass’s Crow wife passed the child to him. If his daughter was awake after her supper, the trapper cuddled the babe across his arm or bounced her gently in his lap while Waits cooked their supper. But most evenings the tiny one fell asleep as the warm milk filled her tummy.

So the man sat quietly with the child sleeping against him, watching his wife kneel at the fire, listening to the twilight advancing upon them, his nostrils taking in the feral innocence of this land carried on every breeze. With all the scars, the slashes of knife, those pucker holes from bullets and iron-tipped arrows too, with the frequent visits of pain on his old joints and the dim sight left him in that one eye … even with all those infirmities, this trapper fondly named Scratch nonetheless believed Dame Fortune had embraced him more times than she had shunned