“A while back, one of those old mountain men wandered in. Claimed he knew my grandpap and used to drink in his tavern, more than forty years ago. I figured he was probably crazy, but there was just enough of a chance he was telling the truth that I bought him a drink for old time's sake. Can't remember what he said his name was. Deacon or something like that.”
Chance inclined his head toward the guards on the platforms. “Would they have really started shooting if somebody threw a punch?”
“Damn right they would have,” snapped Mike, losing his slightly more jovial attitude. “Both of those boys can hit a gnat at a hundred yards.”
Ace wasn't convinced that the saloon owner would resort to execution to break up a fight, especially with so many innocent bystanders around . . . but as long as people believed it was possible, they would be a lot more likely to behave.
“Now drink up,” Mike went on, “and then get out.”
“You're giving us the boot, too?” asked Chance, sounding surprised.
“That's right. I don't want you hotheads starting anything else.”
Ace was equally determined that wouldn't happen, so he didn't argue with the saloonkeeper's edict. He wanted to leave and find a place to stay for the night. He had already seen enough of St. Louis to satisfy any curiosity he had about the city. He drained the rest of his beer and told Mike, “Again, sorry for the trouble.”
“Let's just go,” Chance muttered after swallowing the last of his beer.
They headed for the entrance, moving past several tables full of drinkers and a couple poker games. Chance pushed through the batwings first with Ace right behind him. They went to the hitch rail, untied their horses, and started along the street leading the animals.
Ace was looking around for a hotel that might be a place they could afford to stay when hands suddenly grabbed him and jerked him away from his horse, flinging him along a narrow alley between two buildings. The hour was late in the afternoon and shadows already gathered in the alley, but as Ace stumbled and then caught his balance, he could see well enough to make out several figures blocking his way back to the street.
A couple of the men had grabbed Chance, too, and dragged him into the narrow alley space. They gave him a hard shove that made him go to one knee. He cursed bitterly as Ace took hold of his arm and helped him up.
“Look what I landed in!” Chance exclaimed.
Ace was less worried about that than he was about the fact that they were surrounded. He recognized not only the burly dockworker called Dave but also the man who had spilled his drink when Chance bumped into him.
“So the two of you are friends,” Ace said.
Dave shook his head and grinned. “Naw, I don't even know this fella. But we both have friends of our own, and we both know you two need a good stompin'. So that's what we're gonna give you.”
With fists flying, the ring of attackers closed in around the Jensen boys.
J. A. Johnstone on William W. Johnstone
“Print the Legend”
William W. Johnstone was born in southern Missouri, the youngest of four children. He was raised with strong moral and family values by his minister father, and tutored by his schoolteacher mother. Despite this, he quit school at age fifteen.
“I have the highest respect for education,” he says, “but such is the folly of youth, and wanting to see the world beyond the four walls and the blackboard.”
True to this vow, Bill attempted to enlist in the French Foreign Legion (“I saw Gary Cooper in
Beau Geste
when I was a kid and I thought the French Foreign Legion would be fun”) but was rejected, thankfully, for being underage. Instead, he joined a traveling carnival and did all kinds of odd jobs. It was listening to the veteran carny folk, some of whom had been on the circuit since the late 1800s, telling amazing tales about their experiences, that planted the storytelling seed in Bill's imagination.
“They were mostly honest people, despite the bad reputation traveling carny shows had back then,” Bill remembers. “Of course, there were exceptions. There was one guy named Picky, who got that name because he was a master pickpocket. He could steal a man's socks right off his feet without him knowing. Believe me, Picky got us chased out of more than a few towns.”
After a few months of this grueling existence, Bill returned home and finished high school. Next came stints as a deputy sheriff in the Tallulah, Louisiana, Sheriff's Department, followed by a hitch in the U.S. Army. Then he began a career in radio broadcasting at KTLD in Tallulah, which would last sixteen years. It was there that he fine-tuned his storytelling skills. He turned to writing in 1970, but it wouldn't be until 1979 that his first novel,
The Devil's Kiss
, was published. Thus began the full-time writing career of William W. Johnstone. He wrote horror (
The Uninvited
), thrillers (
The Last of the Dog Team
), even a romance novel or two. Then, in February 1983,
Out of the Ashes
was published. Searching for his missing family in a postapocalyptic America, rebel mercenary and patriot Ben Raines is united with the civilians of the Resistance forces and moves to the forefront of a revolution for the nation's future.
Out of the Ashes
was a smash. The series would continue for the next twenty years, winning Bill three generations of fans all over the world. The series was often imitated but never duplicated. “We all tried to copy the Ashes series,” said one publishing executive, “but Bill's uncanny ability, both then and now, to predict in which direction the political winds were blowing brought a certain immediacy to the table no one else could capture.” The Ashes series would end its run with more than thirty-four books and twenty million copies in print, making it one of the most successful men's action series in American book publishing. (The Ashes series also, Bill notes with a touch of pride, got him on the FBI's Watch List for its less than flattering portrayal of spineless politicians and the growing power of big government over our lives, among other things. In that respect, I often find myself saying, “Bill was years ahead of his time.”)
Always steps ahead of the political curve, Bill's recent thrillers, written with myself, include
Vengeance Is Mine, Invasion USA, Border War, Jackknife, Remember the Alamo, Home Invasion, Phoenix Rising, The Blood of Patriots, The Bleeding Edge,
and the upcoming
Suicide Mission.
It is with the western, though, that Bill found his greatest success. His westerns propelled him onto both the
USA Today
and the
New York Times
bestseller lists.
Bill's western series include
Matt Jensen, the Last Mountain Man, Preacher, the First Mountain Man, The Family Jensen, Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter, Eagles, MacCallister
(an Eagles spin-off),
Sidewinders, The Brothers O'Brien, Sixkiller, Blood Bond, The Last Gunfighter,
and the new series
Flintlock
and
The Trail West.
May 2013 saw the hardcover western
Butch Cassidy: The Lost Years.
“The western,” Bill says, “is one of the few true art forms that is one hundred percent American. I liken the Western as America's version of England's Arthurian legends, like the Knights of the Round Table, or Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Starting with the 1902 publication of
The Virginian
by Owen Wister, and followed by the greats like Zane Grey, Max Brand, Ernest Haycox, and of course Louis L'Amour, the western has helped to shape the cultural landscape of America.
“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 reasonâto enhance the enjoyment of readers.
“It was Owen Wister, in
The Virginian
, who first coined the phrase âWhen 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, âWhen the truth becomes legend, print the legend.'
“These are the words I live by.”