A Pearl Brothers Western Adventure Series :Historical Western Action Adventure by Andrew Weston ➱ Book Series Sale & Giveaway
Always finish what you start.
Trouble on the Smoky Hill Trail
A Pearl Brothers Western Adventure Book 1
by Andrew Weston
Genre: Historical Western Action Adventure
**Only .99cents!**
Shootout at Russell Springs
A Pearl Brothers Western Adventure Book 2
The
second book in a brand new Western adventure series from Andrew
Weston!
A
tornado tears through the open plains of Kansas, leaving death and
destruction in its wake.
Yet that force of nature isn’t the
only thing that might ravage the land.
The Plains Indians are
massing in their hundreds. Cheyenne, Comanche, Lakota, Kiowa, and
Arapaho. All of them, turning their eyes toward the foreign settlers
who encroach ever further into their ancestral hunting grounds with
each and every passing year.
Already on the run from the law,
the notorious Reno Gang also come calling, thinking that the
residents of Elder Grove will be no match for a bunch of murdering
horse thieves.
And just who are the two strangers from the
east that come to town, acting all friendly, yet asking sly question
about the Pearl brothers?
One thing’s for sure. . .
Another
storm is brewing. And when it strikes, not everyone will walk away.
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Uprising in Comanche Country
A Pearl Brothers Western Adventure Book 3
The
third book in a brand new Western adventure series from Andrew
Weston!
It
took the Pearl brothers considerable time and effort to shape the
region around Elder Grove into a safe haven for all. For settlers.
For travelers. Even for the Plains Indians who constantly roam the
prairie in pursuit of buffalo.
But when a bunch of marauding
army deserters commits a heinous act that rouses the massed tribes to
anger, it puts all that hard work in jeopardy. Yes, the hornet’s
nest has been stirred. So much so, that even the Comanche are
provoked to war.
And their sting is deadly indeed.
How
the Pearl brothers will react remains to be seen. But one thing’s
for sure. Nobody will escape unscathed.
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Whatever that something was, Alfred
Johansen couldn’t immediately figure it out, as those moments between the end
of a dream and half-wakefulness always left him feeling sluggish and
unbalanced. Nonetheless, he knew his home intimately, and an air of latent
menace pervaded the somber tranquility of the night. Unsettled, he shuffled
quietly to the edge of the mattress so as not to wake his wife, stilled his
breathing, and strained to listen over the wheeze of her gentle snoring.
No matter how hard he tried, the
source of Alfred’s unease continued to elude him.
His sense of alarm increased. Heart
thudding, Alfred levered himself up onto his elbows, and a gentle breeze cooled
the sweat now forming across his brow. An unexpected sensation, seeing as how
he religiously shut the doors and shuttered the windows every night before
retiring.
While Alfred and his family reaped
the benefits of the security offered by their small community of just over a
dozen homesteads, all of them scattered in close proximity on the northern side
of Walnut Creek, forty-five miles west of Alexander, Kansas, there was always a
danger to living here. The nearest town, Gove, was twenty miles away to the
north. A good full day’s ride by wagon, or less than half that on a good horse
maintaining a steady trot. And even though the new Wells Fargo coaches still
braved the old Butterfield Overland Express route, or the southern Santa Fe
Trail running past Dodge, they were still too far away to be of help at times
like this. So you had to learn, and quickly, to sort out problems yourself.
Highlighting Alfred’s predicament.
Procrastinating would achieve
nothing.
He decided to go and check, just in
case, and reached toward the bedside table where he kept his old 1839 model
Colt Paterson, which had been converted to fire .44 Henry Rimfire cartridges.
Just holding it would help to calm his jitters.
Except it wasn’t there. Oh, for
pity’s sake. I must have left it out in the kitchen.
Irritated, Alfred swung his feet out
of bed and almost tripped as his sock snagged a splintered floorboard.
Scuttling forward a few paces, he bit back a curse and turned to stare at Rita,
his wife. His night vision allowed him to make out the shape of her form
beneath the covers. She hadn’t moved. Good. I don’t want to upset her unduly. .
.
That thought died in his head as he
caught sight of the window. One of the shutter’s was open, and the small rocks
his wife used to weigh the fabric down and hold them in place were missing,
allowing the cloth to swing free. Drawn like a moth to a flame, Alfred padded
across to the window, brushed the cloth aside, and peered outside.
A half-moon peeked from behind
purple clouds, heavy with the last snows of spring. By its light, Alfred could
see the stones clearly, laid out in a neat line in the dirt, next to a tight
cluster of footprints. Vilken (What)?
Withdrawing from the window, he
started for the door and tried to reason things through. Who would be snooping
about at this time of night? People around here know we don’t have much, and
that our community is self-sufficient.
A barely audible thud, from deeper
inside the house interrupted his musing. Somebody’s definitely moving about.
One of the girls perhaps? Has something spooked them? He glanced toward the
bedside table. Is that why my gun is missing?
The twins, Margit and Astrid, were
coming up on seventeen years old. Precocious to a fault, they were spirited,
reckless, and way too bossy for their own good.
Tsking quietly, Alfred relaxed a
little. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve told them not to put themselves in
danger by investigating things for themselves. Come morning, Ill. . .
Another sound, this one laced with
hushed voices along with a stifled squeal of protest intruded. For some reason,
just hearing it turned Alfred’s stomach, and his protective instincts finally
kicked in. Djävla (Goddamit). I’d better arm myself.
His father’s shotgun hung from a
couple of hooks above the fireplace out in the main room. Alfred wasn’t the
marksman the Pearl brothers were, but that old gun would be forgiving enough in
this situation to even things out a little. Indeed, the mere sight of it had
been enough to douse the heat of troubled egos—with other settlers heading
west, and wandering bands of Lakota and Cheyenne—several times over the past
two years they’d been putting their little community together, so he had no
doubt it would act as a deterrent now.
If he got to the darn thing, that
was.
As cautiously as he possibly could,
Alfred depressed the latch with his thumb, and prevented it from rattling by
using both his hands to maneuver the bar into position. Once open, he lowered
the lever and left the door ajar, before tiptoeing silently out into the short
hallway leading from the bedrooms and into the living area. Whatever was
happening, the sounds coming from his daughters’ room were becoming more
frantic. Swallowing his anger, he began imagining all the terrible things he
would do to anyone trying to take advantage of his daughters’ virtue, and
quickened his pace until he was nigh on running. Just hang on, girls. Hang on
for a minute or two . . . huh?
It wasn’t until Alfred was halfway
across the room that three things hit him in quick succession.
Shootout at Russell Springs
The spirits must have
been looking down on Set-ankeah and smiling, for there, not more than two
hundred yards away and bordered on three sides by a grove of cottonwood trees,
sat a small group of whitewashed homes that could only belong to homesteaders.
And Set-ankeah didn’t
like homesteaders.
They had two faces;
false tongues; bad medicine of the most poisonous kind. They promised much, but
gave very little. In fact, they gave nothing while taking everything . . . As
he had learned to his cost, back when they knew him better as Sitting Bear, or
by his more familiar Kiowan name, Satank.
And they were never
satisfied. Always wanting more when they already had so much that they could
never possibly use it all.
Set-ankeah and his
warrior party were heading south, toward the ancient burial grounds just north
of the Napeste River, for the great gathering of the principle chiefs, war
chiefs and medicine men of the Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and
of course, the Kiowa. That gathering would decide the future of their ancestral
hunting grounds once and for all, and of the accursed white man who dared to
settle on them.
Nearly seventy summers
had passed since Set-ankeah was a child, and the plains were filled with
buffalo for as far as the eye could see; more than twenty since the greatest of
many waves of immigrants flooded in from the east, bringing their fences and their
trails and iron roads that cut across the grasslands at will. And now the
buffalo upon which they depended for their very way of life were nothing but a
shadow of what they once were. All thanks to the white menace that couldn’t be
trusted.
Set-ankeah remembered
this wood and the spring at its center from the days when he first became a
warrior. It was a good place to spend a few days, relaxing in between hunts. A
place to rest their horses. To sing songs and tell stories.
Yet the white settler
had built their homes right in the middle of it. Even worse, they’d erected
their fences and planted crops as if assuming the right to treat what belonged
to everyone as their own. Especially the water.
No, this was too good an
opportunity to miss. And Set-ankeah intended to make a statement. One that
would send a clear message to all those who trespassed upon their land.
“What do you want to do,
brother?” That question from Red Hand, his second, so named for all the blood
he had shed.
Set-ankeah unclipped his
spotted antelope robe, folded it neatly, and tucked it beneath his riding
blanket. That done, he removed his feathered tomahawk from his belt, raised it
in both hands toward the sun, and began chanting, invoking a blessing from the
spirits who always watched over him.
Red Hand grinned,
fiercely. Set-ankeah was the principle chief and shaman of the
Qkoie-Tsain-Gah—otherwise known as the Koitsenko—a warrior society of the
Kiowa’s most violent and skilled Dog Fighters. Therefore, he understood the
significance of that gesture only too well.
Wheeling his mount, Red
Hand uttered a yodeling cry, prompting an instant response from the fifteen
other members of their party. Shrieking in reply, they spurred their mustangs,
and within seconds, the ground shook to the thunder of hooves.
Wise to the ways of the
warrior, Set-ankeah allowed his braves to build up a head start. As he’d
learned when rising through the ranks, the first few seconds of a battle were
vital. And if you were in a position to make adjustments when and where they were
needed, then all the better.
His gaze roved the scene
before him, taking in the sum of three main dwellings, a large barn where the
white man no doubt kept some of their livestock, and several smaller structures
within a fenced compound. Smoke curled from chimneys positioned at the far end
of each home. Good! They have not yet emerged to begin
their day and will panic when they realize death comes for them.
Men with pale skins,
long white shirts and heavy pants began emerging from doorways, some holding
onto hats, all of them clutching rifles and shouting. Women in blue or grey
dresses scuttled through those same doorways moments later. Clucking like hens,
they had their hands full, ushering screaming children toward sheds built
alongside each house. Somewhere, a dog started barking.
The men hadn’t made it
off their porches before the first of Set-ankeah warriors leaped the outer
fences. Scrambling to a standstill, the homesteaders commenced firing, some
standing, others taking the time to kneel before letting off a shot. None of
them accurate.
Set-ankeah spurred his
pinto to greater efforts and leaned low, over its neck. Ignoring the mane now
tickling his face, he whispered in reassuring tones about the honor they would
soon earn together.
Movement out of the
corner of his eye caught his attention. The brave riding next to him must have
been hit, for he lost control of his horse. Grimacing in pain, he clutched at
his side and fell, seconds later, before rolling away into the grass. Iron Jacket!
Set-ankeah bared his
teeth. He knew all of his warriors intimately, and Iron Jacket had earned his
name after being shot many times. But his medicine was strong, for he had
survived on each occasion. Set-ankeah prayed that would be the case now.
A flock of sparrows erupted from the undergrowth on the far
side of the river, near the shallows, filling the air with chirruping wings and
frantic feathers. Nolan squinted, thinking his eyes must be playing ticks on
him, for some of those tiny birds seemed to be diving straight at him.
His perceptions started to shift. Those feathers don’t belong to any bird I know?
Realization slapped at his nerves like a palm-shaped ice
block, “Injuns!” he yelled, diving for cover as the first arrows slammed home
exactly where he’d been sat a split second before.
And then he heard them, yipping and yapping from in among
the trees. Calls that were followed by the whistling hiss of another volley of
flint-tipped mortality.
Two yards to his left, Private Harris dropped like a stone,
pierced through the heart and eye. Standing right next to Harris, Corporal
McKenzie met a similar fate, choking on the shaft now protruding from his
throat. Whoops of hate sounded from all around, rising up to smother the yelps
of surprise and grunts of pain from his men, in one place after another.
Familiar voices cried out, spurring Nolan to try and regain
some degree of control. “Make for your horses and get your guns. If you can’t
see a target, fire anyway to summon help.”
Time wasn’t working properly. Although Nolan seemed to be
aware of everything unfolding about him, he hadn’t realized that he’d been
scrambling along the bank and up toward those bushes where his own mount was
picketed. His gaze came to rest on his cavalry issue carbine, sitting snugly in
its saddle holster, and he experienced a momentary sense of tunnel vision as he
stretched for it.
But not for long.
An arrow embedded itself in the grass, scant inches from his
head. He froze, mouth agape, staring at the brightly painted shaft and noting
all the work that had gone into creating such an efficient instrument of war.
That delay saved his life, for two more thudded into the damp earth scant
seconds later, right where he would have been, had he continued his mad dash
toward his weapon.
Someone managed to get off a shot. Private Martin? He was further to my right. . . Sparking off a
volley of return fire from the opposite shore. The howling rose in volume, as
did the sound of running feet through water.
Along with something much heavier. Horses?
And then he saw them. A mixed band of Lakota and Cheyenne,
coming right at him, some of foot, others mounted. Is that a Comanche with them?
His hand brushed his rifle. Yanking it from his scabbard, he
operated the lever, cocked it, brought the weapon to his shoulder, aimed and
fired in one smooth motion. The Indian right in front of him twisted and fell,
yelling all the way. Nolan didn’t have time to congratulate himself. After
racking another round into the chamber, he cocked and fired again, sending a
second brave to a watery grave.
Too many warriors remained.
Refusing to panic, Nolan allowed the distracting sounds of
battle to fade and adopted a rhythm that saw two more braves blown backwards
before they’d cleared the shoreline. But such luck couldn’t last indefinitely.
It was as he cocked his weapon for the fifth time that Nolan
felt the impact of something hard and heavy. Something that sent the air
whooshing from his lungs. More annoyed that he’d missed the opportunity to fire
than anything else, he tried to inhale to steady his aim and discovered he
couldn’t. Not properly anyway, thanks to the blue and white shaft that had
somehow embedded itself in the right side of his chest.
How did . . .?
Just looking at the darn thing brought on a wash of pins and needles that made
him feel sick, and hot and cold all over. Sweat bloomed from every pore of his
body, especially his hands, which now refused to hold onto his rifle properly.
He shivered, and only just managed to shoot before dropping it entirely.
His aim was good. The brave staggered forward a few paces,
gnashing his teeth in outrage, and flopped, face down, into the grass.
An astronomy and criminal law graduate, he is the creator of a number of internationally acclaimed, bestselling works. Andrew also has the privilege of being a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, and the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.
When relaxing, Andrew devotes some of his spare time to supporting animal charities, and writing regular reviews and articles for Amazing Stories and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
More recently, he has turned his eye toward the creation of the ultimate western adventure, something that blends the very best elements of “The Dark Tower” with “Once Upon a Time in the West.”
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Thank you sooo much for hosting the Pearl Brothers here - It's very much appreciated
ReplyDeleteThe excerpt sounds really interesting. Thanks for sharing.
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