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William W. Johnstone’s legendary mountain men have fought their battles and conquered a fierce frontier. Now, three generations of the Jensen clan are trying to live in peace on their sprawling Colorado ranch. But for men with fighting in their blood, trouble is never very far ...
INTO THE EYE OF A STORM
They are strangers in a strange land—a band of German immigrants trespassing across the Jensen family spread. Led by a baron fleeing a dark past in Germany and accompanied by a woman beautiful enough to dazzle young Matt, the pilgrims are being pursued by a pack of brutal outlaws hungry for blood, money—or maybe something else ... The Jensens are willing to help the pioneers get to Wyoming. But they don’t know the whole story of their newfound friends, or who the outlaws really are. By the time the wagon train reaches Wyoming the truth is ready to explode—in a clash of hard fighting and hard deaths in a violent land ...
The Family Jensen:
The Violent Land
By William W. Johnstone
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CHAPTER 1
The seven men rode into Big Rock, Colorado, a few minutes before noon. Nobody in the bustling little cowtown paid much attention to them. Everyone went on about their own business, even when the men reined their horses to a halt and dismounted in front of the bank.
Clete Murdock was their leader, a craggy-faced man with graying red hair who over the past ten years had robbed banks in five states and a couple of territories. He had killed enough men that he’d lost track of the number, especially if you threw Indians and Mexicans into the count.
His younger brothers Tom and Grant rode with him. Tom was a slightly younger version of Clete, but Grant was the baby of the family, a freckle-faced youngster in his twenties who wanted more than anything else in the world to be a desperado like his brothers.
Until a year or so earlier he had lived on the family farm in Kansas with their parents, but illness had struck down both of the elder Murdocks in the span of a few days, so Grant had set out to find his black-sheep brothers and throw in with them.
Ed Garvey was about as broad as he was tall, with a bristling black spade beard. He wasn’t much good with a handgun. That was why he carried a sawed-off shotgun under his coat. As long as his partners in crime gave him plenty of room, he was a valuable ally. They were careful not to get in his line of fire when he pulled out that street sweeper.
The tall, skinny towhead with the eye that sometimes drifted off crazily was Chick Bowman. The loco eye gave him the look of somebody who might not be right in the head, but in reality Chick was fairly smart for an outlaw who’d had very little schooling in his life.
The one who wasn’t all there was Denny McCoy, who followed Chick around like a devoted pup. Denny was big and barrel chested, and he had accidentally killed two whores by fondling their necks with such enthusiasm that they couldn’t breathe anymore. Chick had gotten Denny out of both of those scrapes without getting either of them lynched.
The member of the gang who had been with Clete the longest was a Crow who called himself Otter. He had worked as a scout for the army, but after coming too damned close to being with Custer when old Yellow Hair went traipsing up the Little Big Horn to his death, Otter had decided that the military life wasn’t for him. He knew Clete, who had been a sergeant before deserting, and had looked him up. Clete’s prejudice against redskins didn’t extend to Otter, the only man he knew who took more pure pleasure in killing than he did.
As the group tied up their horses at the hitch rack in front of the bank, Otter moved closer to Clete and said quietly, “Lawman.”
Clete followed the direction the Crow’s eyes were indicating and saw a burly, middle-aged man moving along the boardwalk several buildings away.
“Yeah, I see him,” Clete said. “His name’s Monte Carson. Used to have sort of a name as a fast gun, but he’s been totin’ a badge here for several years and people have pretty much forgotten about him. I wouldn’t underestimate him, but I don’t reckon he poses much of a problem for us, either.”
“Anything goes wrong, I’ll kill him first,” Otter said.
Clete nodded in agreement. Otter would stay with the horses and watch the street. If shots erupted in the bank, the Crow would lift his rifle and drill Sheriff Monte Carson immediately so he couldn’t interfere with the gang’s getaway.
Otherwise, Otter would wait until the other outlaws left the bank, and if anyone tried to follow them and raise a ruckus,
Either way, there was a very good chance the sheriff would die in the next few minutes.
Clete glanced at everyone else and got nods of readiness from all of them except Denny, who just did what Chick told him to, anyway. The six of them stepped up onto the boardwalk and moved toward the bank’s double doors.
Otter’s head turned slowly as his gaze roamed from one end of the street to the other. This town had been peaceful for too long, he thought wryly. If that hadn’t been the case, someone surely would have noticed the seven human wolves who had ridden in together, not even trying to mask their intentions as they closed in on the bank.
Otter frowned slightly as he thought about the name of the town. Big Rock ... There was something familiar about that. He knew he had heard of the place for some reason. But he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was.
It didn’t matter, anyway. After today Big Rock would be famous because the Murdock gang had cleaned out the bank and killed a few of the citizens.
A broad-shouldered, sandy-haired man in range clothes rode past on a big gray stallion. Otter noticed the horse—a fine one, indeed—but paid little attention to the rider, even when the man reined in and spoke to the sheriff. Otter couldn’t hear the conversation between Carson and the broad-shouldered man.
He didn’t think any more about it, convinced of its utter unimportance.
“Matt and Preacher are coming here?” Sheriff Monte Carson asked with a grin.
“That’s right,” Smoke Jensen said as he rested his hands on his saddlehorn and leaned forward to ease his muscles after the ride into Big Rock from his ranch, Sugarloaf. “In fact, they should be riding in today, according to the letter I got from Matt.”
“I’ll be glad to see ’em again,” Monte said. “Good Lord, Preacher must be a hundred years old by now!”
Smoke chuckled.
“He’s not quite that long in the tooth yet, and he never has looked or acted as old as he is. I reckon he’ll slow down one of these days, but the last time I saw him he seemed as spry as ever.”
Sometimes it seemed to Smoke that he had known the old mountain man called Preacher his entire life. It was hard to remember that he had been sixteen years old when he and his pa first ran into Preacher, not long after
