Book Review: Return of the Mountain Man

Title: Return of the Mountain Man

Author: William W. Johnstone

Date: 1986

Publisher: Kensington

ISBN: 0-7860-1296-X

Length: 189 pages

Quote: “Take a message with you, eagle. Tell Potter and Richards and Stratton and all their gunhands that I'm coming to kill them.”

To the best of his knowledge, William W. Johnstone explains in a note opening this work of fiction, there never was a town called Bury, Idaho. That town was invented as a prototype of all that was ugliest in the early history of the Western States. It has “a bank, probably the best school in that part of the country...a large mercantile store, a weekly newspaper, several saloons, several cafes, a large hotel, a sheriff, several deputies, a jail, a leather shop,” a “Pink House” of prostitution, and “several churches...and a lot of producing mines as well. And nearly all of it was owned by three men: Stratton, Potter, and Richards.” It is “a town without a heart,” where almost everyone, including Richards' common-law wife, young Janey Jensen, is living for money alone.

In a back-story not fully explained in this volume—there were at this point seventeen other books about Smoke Jensen, Last of the Old-Style Mountain Men and Most Feared Gunslinger in the West—Stratton, Potter, and Richards have subjected themselves to blame for the deaths of Smoke's father, foster father, wife, son, and reputation as a relatively law-abiding citizen. For the purposes of this book, they committed all those murders purely because they are evildoers with no reason to live, although it turns out in this book that Smoke's foster father is alive and well. In fact, the prematurely mourned foster father, Preacher (the hero of another Johnstone series), has collected a gang of other old-style Rocky Mountain men to help Smoke exact revenge according to the law, such as it was, of the Old West.

The year is 1874, and rumors credit Wild Bill Hickok with cleaning up the town of Abilene by killing or locking up all the criminals. Smoke Jensen is not, however, a sheriff or marshal, and he and his friends quickly decide that the only way to clean up the town of Bury is to kill all the influential citizens (there are a few others besides the Evil Three), burn their houses and businesses, and chase all the poor young farmers and Pink House girls off to build a presumably nicer town for themselves.

Well, “Western” readers expect the fictional Old West to be even more vicious and violent than the Old West really was...Insults are exchanged, including a brother-sister scene between Smoke and Janey (who is allowed to live), and it all builds up to a big scene where Smoke and friends use the townsmen of Bury for a target shooting demonstration. And we're assured that none of them will ever be missed, least of all by the farmers and Pink House girls, who will “prosper.”

Not my kind of book, but it may be yours. Johnstone has a good reputation among those who like this kind of thing; by now there are even more books in the series. Six or eight of these books will fit into one package.

Prices for this one have gone into the collector range...at the time of posting I can still say $5 per book, $5 per package, $1 per online payment, but I can't guarantee that that will still be true by the time this review goes live.