Author to follow character in death

By DAN BURKHART Of The Montana Gazette Staff said

Terry C. Johnston was about to kill off Titus Bass, his favorite character, when he told his wife he feared that when Bass died, so would he.

“He had thought about it for a long time,” Vanette Johnston said. “He knew he didn’t want Titus Bass to just ride off into the sunset. But it hurt him to have Titus die. That’s when he told me he had this feeling when Titus died, he’d die, too.”

It was an eerie premonition, she said, a foreshadowing of what was to come shortly after his new book was released. Johnston, one of the West’s most prolific and popular writers, lay dying Thursday at St. Vincent Healthcare, a month after he was discovered to have a fatal disease, days after the life of Bass ended in “Wind Walker.”

“I wish I could put a pen into his hand right now and have him raise Titus Bass from the dead if that would revive Terry,” writer and friend Sandra West Prowell said. “We’re not ready to have him leave.”

Johnston, 54, barely clung to life at as friends and family gathered near his hospital bedside, paying respect to a man who “wrote his heart into his work,” according to fellow writer Richard Wheeler. Johnston had been troubled with digestive problems which turned out to be caused by a cancerous tumor rupturing his colon. He has been suffering from renal and respiratory failure since, she said. But, even with life support removed Wednesday, Johnston continued to fight for life. His friends expect no less. “He was a warrior all his life and he still is,” fellow Western writer Matt Braun said.

Braun said he and Johnston became great friends during a two week book tour last summer. “We hit five states, 17 cities and did 26 book signings, spending about 18 hours a day together. You find out whether you like a man pretty quick when you spend that time together,” he laughed. “I found out he was the genuine article.”

Genuine and authentic are two words that come up often among his friends and admirers. “He researched everything. He read old journals, collected old photographs, really studied everything he wrote about,” long time friend Ian Patrick said.

Patrick met Johnston at a Colorado rendezvous more than 25 years ago and later built Johnston a .62 caliber Northwest trade gun, using some parts dating from the 1820s. “When he wrote about how to load, carry and use a gun like that, it’s because he did it,” Patrick said. “He lived and breathed those people in his books.”

The secret to his success as a writer was uncompromising attention to detail and a personal rapport with his readers, according to editor Mark Resnick of St. Martin’s Press. “He had a loyal readership because he was loyal to the work,” he said. “I don’t know any other author who insisted on working with the cartographer to make sure the maps were right.”

While Johnston’s fame might not have been widely recognized in Montana, he is one of the best selling Western frontier writers, Resnick said. “A huge talent with a huge audience. When we say best-selling, we mean it,” Resnick said. “After Louis L’Amour, came Terry C. Johnston.”

Johnston, born in 1947 in Kansas, makes his home in Billings where he has authored more than 30 books He was active in Save the Battlefield, which sought to acquire land around the Little Bighorn National Park, preserving more than 2,000 acres near the 760- acre national park. He has conducted Northern Plains and Mountain Man tours of historical sites including the Reynolds’s Fight on the Powder, Battle of the Rosebud, Custer Battlefield, the Fetterman Fight on Massacre Ridge, the site of the Dull Knife Battle, Battle Butte and the Deer Medicine Rocks where Sitting Bull had his vision of “soldiers falling into camp.”

All of the sites were featured in his books. Tours were often sold out, including the Mountain Man tour scheduled for August. Among his books are best sellers like “Carry the Wind,” “Sioux Dawn,” “Long Winter Gone,” “Cry of the Hawk,” “Lay the Mountains Low.” More information about Johnston can be found at http://www.imt.net/~tjohnston

Johnston’s first book, “Carry the Wind,” introduced readers to Titus Bass, whose exploits as a mountain man in the pre-pioneer days quickly captivated an audience. Best-sellers followed with a Mountain Man series featuring Bass.

Johnston also was known for his Plainsman Series, comprising more than a dozen novels, focusing on the Indian wars and George Armstrong Custer. It was followed by a Sons of the Plains trilogy and a Jonah Hook trilogy. He also wrote prequels to the books featuring Bass.

“I’m in awe of how prolific he is,” historian Link Cullar said. Cullar, a professor at Kingwood College in Texas, taught graduate level courses using Johnston’s books. “No one wrote more accurately and reliably about the American West,” he said. “I couldn’t find a better teaching tool.”

In addition to his writing, Johnston conducted historic tours of famous Western historic sites and was active in helping acquire and preserve land around Little Bighorn Battlefield. In fact, while the national park encompasses 700 acres of the battlefield, Johnston helped add more than 2,000 acres of other historic land around it. He published a newsletter, “Winter Song,” to stay in touch with readers.

“Some might have seen that as simply a marketing tool, but to him it was to stay in touch with the people buying his books,” Resnick said. “He didn’t pay attention much to what other writers or critics said or how the academics treated his work. He knew he owed readers for whatever success he had.”

His integrity about his work resulted in praise from both academics and audience. “He is more expert about the fur trade and Indian wars than any writer living,” Wheeler said. His books claim worldwide readership, according to Resnick, something local bookseller Susan Thomas has witnessed from Thomas Books.

“He’s worked with us to handle autographed book requests and we’d get orders from all over the United States and Europe,” she said. “He is tremendously popular. Johnston worked a variety of jobs before finishing his first book, “Carry the Wind.” A roustabout, paramedic, car salesman and Big Timber’s dog catcher were on his resume, according to Montana State University-Billings professor Sue Hart. The dog catcher job helped him earn a living while he completed that first novel. “It’s interesting to watch how he developed from that,” she said. “I think he’s responsible for the revival of interest in Western novels. His great popularity carried the renewed interest. He did a fabulous thing.”

Living with him has been a dream too, according to Vanette Johnston. There’s been no greater thing in my life,” she said. They met when she worked for a book distributor in St. Louis. “I was given the job of getting him to the airport. His plane was delayed three hours so we talked and it was love at first sight for me. I didn’t expect to hear from him, but he called me about midnight when he got home, we talked all night and the next thing I knew my alarm was going off in the morning,” she said. After that meeting in September 1993, she moved to Montana by December. “I gave up a great job, a great house, a place I’d lived for 30 years,” she said. “That may give you some idea of how powerful our love is.”

Married twice before, Johnston has three children. A son, Josh, lives in Denver. Two children, Erinn and Noah, are being raised by him and Vanette.

While Johnston is a stickler for detail, he is a generous writer and man, his colleagues said. “We never had a rivalry,” Braun said. “We’d sit there on book tours and if someone came up and bought one of his books, he’d say, ‘Hey, have you met Matt Braun? He’s doing good work. You oughta read him.’ That’s the kind of guy he was.” Braun said Johnston is the kind of writer who will be appreciated 50 years from now. “I’ll tell you why. He’s the writer whose books someone will find in a library and read and say, ‘Yeah, that’s how it happened in the American West.’

”Johnston was conscious throughout Thursday, his wife said, but hopes were slim for him surviving the night. “He’s awake and knows what’s going on, but he’s very weak” she said. “Still, he isn’t one to surrender.”

Prowell West, a fourth generation Montanan, said Johnston’s legacy for residents here will be what she experiences when she drives by highway historic markers. “Even though I grew up here and thought I knew something of what went on, I never paid much attention to those markers until I read Terry. Now I stop because the places live for me. I hear the voices because Terry made them flesh and blood and sound and silence and life and death,” she said.

Those who know his work may wish, like Prowell West, that he had a pen to revive Bass and thereby somehow himself. But if that’s not possible, it may be a shame no pen is in his hand as he lays dying. To describe his next journey, the trip no one gets to record. If it was, according to his friends, we’d get the real story.