Forty Guns West by William W. Johnstone Read Free Book Online Page A

“isn’t this grand fun?”
    Baron Wilhelm Zaunbelcher agreed, adding, “But I am so disappointed that we have not been able to kill any savages. Let’s hope our luck will change.”
    Duke Sullivan said, “But what magnificent country we’ve seen. The vastness of it boggles the mind.”
    His mind hadn’t been boggled just yet. But it was about to be.
    All of a sudden, the trail ended against a sheer rock wall. For a moment, Bones was stumped. That confusion abruptly ended when the man next to him, Bill Front, toppled from his saddle, shot through the head. Cal Johnson screamed as Front’s brains splattered all over the front of his shirt.
    Dark Hand had leaped from his horse before the echo of the shot began reverberating around the canyon and jumped for the protection of a rock overhang.
    Boots Baldwin was the next to go down, the front of his shirt suddenly stained with fresh blood. He fell dying against another man and took him to the ground with him.
    Preacher and Eddie had worked for most of a day and a half rigging another surprise for Bones and his party. At Preacher’s yell, Eddie slapped Thunder on the rump and the animal jumped, stretching the rope taut. “Haww!” Eddie yelled, and the animal strained and a wooden platform gave way, spilling hundreds of pounds of rocks of various sizes down into the narrowest part of the canyon trail. The rocks took other rocks with them as they tumbled down the incline, some of them huge boulders, and within a matter of seconds, the trail was blocked by a pile of boulders twenty feet high and fifty feet deep.
    Preacher had both hands filled with those terrible pistols of his and was wreaking havoc on those trapped inside the narrow walls of the dark trail.
    Preacher had gathered up bushes to dry and he lit them and began throwing them onto the canyon floor. Then he started throwing small bags of black powder into the flames. The results were even better than he had hoped for. The concussion of the explosions brought down more rocks, hopelessly blocking the trail in a half dozen more locations. Horses were bucking and jumping and screaming in fright, throwing riders all over the place. Dead, dying, and wounded men were lying on the sand, many of them calling out for help that no one was able to give.
    A warrior’s smile on his lips, Preacher ran around the lip of the blind canyon to where Eddie was, and together, they got the hell out of there.
    * * *
    None of the reporters had been hit by any of the rounds Preacher had fired, but they had experienced the sensation of having the crap scared out of them.
    Bones squatted down after he realized that no more shots were coming their way and assessed the situation. It was terrible. It was going to take them a good day and a half, maybe longer, to dig their way out of the huge piles of rocks blocking the trail in half a dozen places. And they’d lose another four or five days tending to the wounded. Normally, Bones would have left the wounded to fend for themselves. But with the reporters along, he couldn’t do that. They would write him up as a monster or worse.
    â€œDamn you, Preacher,” he softly offered the oath. “Damn your eyes.”
    Dark Hand squatted down beside him in the churned and bloody sand. “I tried to warn you about Preacher. Do not underestimate the man. Not ever.”
    Bones ignored that. “How many men down?”
    â€œEight dead. Nine others wounded. Two of them will not live through the night.”
    â€œOne man and a snot-nosed kid and they take out nineteen men and we never even got a glimpse of them.”
    Sir Elmore Jerrold-Taylor turned to one of Bones’s regular gang and said, “Your Mister Preacher appears to have no fair play in him, whatsoever.”
    Andy Price looked at the Englishman for a long moment, then shook his head, which had a big knot in it from a falling rock, muttered something under his breath, and