Preacher's Strike

Preacher, the First Mountain Man, is on his way home to the mountains when a wealthy European stops him with an offer. The man's cousin, a reckless young woman, ran off to America with her lover and has vanished. He wants the famous frontier tracker to find her and will pay a small fortune to do it. Preacher has little patience for the troubles of fancy foreigners, but he reluctantly takes the job.

The search heads west out of St. Louis, and Preacher soon suspects the party is headed for trouble. The first blow comes early: the woman's American lover was killed years ago by Teton Sioux, so the trail begins with a dead man. Worse, the notorious Knox gang has learned of the European's wealth and plans to kidnap him and hold him for ransom. Then a fierce band of Sioux warriors attacks Preacher and his men, and the odds grow steadily worse.

The greatest surprise waits at the end of the trail, when Preacher finally meets the missing woman and learns what she had to do to stay alive. Caught between ruthless kidnappers, angry warriors and a captive who is far cleverer than she first appears, he has to rely on all his frontier skill just to get out alive.

Preacher's Strike is a Western from William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone, part of their long-running series about Preacher.