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The Last Mountain Man [Mountain Man Series Book 6] [MultiFormat]
eBook by William W. Johnstone
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$8.99 |
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$7.64 |
eBook Category: Historical Fiction
eBook Description: Smoke Jensen is a man on a quest for vengeance. Together with only a Navy Colt on his hip and an old mountain man named Preacher by his side, Smoke is pursuing the men who destroyed everything he knows and loves. Preacher taught him how to fight and die like a man, the men who wronged him taught him how to hate and the mountains have taught him to stand tall. But nothing can quench his thirst for blood.
eBook Publisher: e-reads, Published: 1984
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2001
This eBook is part of the following series:
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.1 MB], eReader (PDB) [168 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [156 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [141 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [163 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [198 KB], hiebook (KML) [395 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [235 KB], iSilo (PDB) [128 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [162 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [201 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [215 KB]
Words: 48856
Reading time: 139-195 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
PROLOGUEHe 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. If he was coming home. 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 a fool. Then you had a devil of a time getting back on Ange. Kirby plodded down the turn row on the east side of the field. Dust from the road caught his eyes. One rider pulling up to the house, leading a saddleless, riderless horse. A bay. The boy touched the smooth butt of the Navy .36 stuck behind his wide belt. A man just couldn't be too careful these days, what with some of those Kansas Jayhawkers still around, killing and looting and raping. But, he reminded himself, some of the Missouri Redlegs were just as bad as the Jayhawkers. Seems like war brought out the poison in some and the good in others. Kirby's father hadn't held much with slavery, but he did feel a state had a right to set and uphold its own laws, so he had ridden off to fight with the Gray. His Pa's brother, up in Iowa, whom Kirby had not seen but one time in his life, was a farmer, like most of the Jensen men. But he had marched off to fight with the Blue. He had gotten killed, so Kirby had heard, in Chancellorsville, back in '63. At sixteen, Kirby didn't believe a man had the right to keep another in chains, as a slave, although there hadn't been much of that in this part of Missouri: everybody was too poor, just a day to day struggle keeping body and soul together. But he did believe, like this father, probably because of his father, that the government in far-off Washington on the river didn't have the right to tell a state what it could and couldn't do in all matters. Didn't seem right. Had Kirby been old enough, and not had his Ma to look after, he would have ridden for the Gray. As Ange plodded closer to the house, Kirby could make out the figure in the front yard. It was his father.
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