Spirit Of The Mountain Man/ordeal Of The Mountain Man (Pinnacle Westerns) (5 page)

Five miles outside of town to the east, he halted the growing band and gathered them around. “We’re heading north from here.”

“How far north?” one fellow with an over-fondness for the desert asked with a gimlet eye.

“Quite a ways.”

“Thought you said this feller we’re to kill lives in Colorado?”

“He does, but we’re not going there.”

Upon hearing that, Fin Brock looked hard at Spectre, doubt clear in his narrow face. “Then how are we gonna get him?”

Spectre’s answer was simple enough for anyone. “We make him come to us.”

Farlee Huntoon got in his nickel’s worth. “Easier said than done, I reckon. ’Specially if he finds out how many of us there is.”

Others agreed. Huntoon pushed his luck. “One man alone, he don’t have to come up again’ us, lessen he chooses to.”

Victor Spectre’s voice crackled in reply. “There are ways, Mr. Huntoon, to make a man do anything you want him to. If you weren’t such a dolt, you’d know that.”

“Say what? Was you tryin’ to insult me, Mr. Spectre?”

Victor spoke lightly, his face unreadable and his tone dry. “No, Mr. Huntoon. I was praising the remarkable lack of genius engendered in the terminally inbred.”

“Well—ah—okay, I reckon that’s no insult then. Ain’t often I get praised.”

“No, I expect not.” Spectre turned away.

One of the new men, Judson Reese, better spoken and dressed than the average, touched his hat brim in a sort of salute. “If we cannot have the exact location, can you at least give us a general idea of our destination?”

Spectre beamed at him. “I admire a well-spoken man. Yes, I’ll answer that, since you’ve put it so nicely. In the short term, I feel you men need some recreation. Especially after being in that straight-laced place. We shall pay a visit to the Utes. I hear there is a prosperous trading post not far north of here. Then we will be going on to Wyoming, perhaps even Montana. But, rest assured, wherever we go, Smoke Jensen will come to us.”

Back on the Sugarloaf, Sally Jensen knew something had gone terribly wrong for her husband the moment he rode up the lane to the main house. His usually high, smooth brow wore lines of furrows. He kissed her somewhat absently, then hugged her tightly to his chest as though it would be the last time.

“What is it, Smoke?”

Neither he nor Monte Carson had mentioned the real cause of Monte’s visit to the ranch a week earlier. Now Smoke found himself at a loss as to how to explain. So, he used the time-honored tactic of husbands everywhere. He evaded.

“It’s nothing important. I’ll tell you over supper. And—ah—ask Bobby to take supper with us, too, please.”

That worried Sally even more. Good wife that she was, though, she remained quiet about it. She fixed them a choice rib roast from a steer recently slaughtered out of the small herd kept for that purpose—Smoke would like that—and mounds of mashed potatoes—Bobby would like that—with pan gravy, turnips, and a half gallon, blue Mason jar of wilted lettuce put up last summer. She had already baked a pie.

They ate and Smoke related only the gossip he had picked up in Big Rock that he knew would interest Sally. Then, over a second piece of pie and a cup of coffee, Smoke grudgingly drug out the topic he least wanted to discuss.

“Sally, do you remember when Monte rode out here a while ago?”

“How could I not? It was only last week.”

“What you are not aware of is why he came.” And he went on to give her a highly edited version of the escape and the backgrounds of the men involved. When he had finished, Sally sat with her hands in her lap and stared at the checked tablecloth. At last, she raised her head and spoke somewhat shakily.

“What is it you are going to do?”

Smoke frowned. Now came the hard part. “I am going to be gone for a while. It’s me they want, not you, or the hands, or even Bobby. Odds are they are unaware he exists. I’ll put some distance between us and then let it be known where I am. The word will get to them. They’ll come. And then I will take care of them the way I should have the first time around.”

Sally said it plainly enough that its tone of resignation nearly broke Smoke’s heart. “You’ll kill them.”

“If that’s what it takes.” He broke his hazel gaze from her steady, demanding eyes. “We can hope it ends otherwise.”

Bobby suddenly charged into the conversation. “I want to go with you, Smoke.”

“No. That’s out of the question. I have to do this alone and not endanger anyone else. Monte even offered me deputies and his own help to defend the Sugarloaf. I told him no. My way is the best.”

“I’m big enough,” Bobby protested. “You’ve gotta let me come. I can shoot and I’ve been practicin’ with rifle and six-gun. Ike says I’m a far above average shot, even from horseback. And you taught me how to live in the mountains.”

Smoke needed little effort to sound stern. “Not another word, young man.”

Sally got right to the most painful item. “When?”

“I’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning.”

Tears swam in Sally’s eyes as she cleared the table, and she brushed them away angrily. He was her man and he would do what he thought best. Though if he would listen to anyone, it was she. Sally tried to use that power sparingly. His feelings hurt, Bobby excused himself early to go to the bunkhouse.

That night, laying in bed, Smoke reached out and tenderly took Sally in his arms. She came eagerly and they had a long, tender, passionate parting. The one in the morning would be a facade, a formality for the hands who would witness it.

Pale gray hovered over the eastern ridge as Smoke Jensen came from the kitchen door and took up the reins to his pack horse and Thunder and turned back to the open doorway. Sally hesitated only a second, then lifted her skirt and apron and ran to his embrace. He held her tightly and she did a remarkable job of holding back the tears.

Stuff and nonsense,
she thought angrily as she felt the burning behind closed lids. She had seen her man off to danger a hundred times before and not acted so childishly. She pulled back and they kissed hungrily.

“You take care of yourself, Smoke Jensen.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll be sure to do that,” Smoke said with wry humor.

They kissed again and Smoke swung into the saddle. He looked around, wondering why Bobby had not come out to see him off. With a light-hearted wave he parted from his wife and set out down the lane to the main gate of the Sugarloaf. As he neared it, he saw a forlorn figure waiting for him there.

Bobby did not argue or even plead. His looks said it all. His throat worked to fight back the lump, his big, blue eyes pooled with tears. He worked lids rapidly to fight them back, determined not to shed them in a shameful display. After all, if he was going to prove he was big enough to go with Smoke, he had to be too old to cry like a baby. Hope died hard in the breast of a thirteen-year-old. It crashed suddenly and swiftly for Bobby when he heard Smoke’s soft, sincere words.

“No, Bobby, you still can’t go. I’ll see you when this is over.”

Bobby had to force the words past the thickness in his throat. The effort caused his hat to fall from his head and hang by its string. “Wh-When will that be, Smoke?”

“Only the Almighty knows that, son.”

“Then don’t go, Smoke. Please don’t go.”

Smoke Jensen shook his head at the intensity of the boy’s concern. “I have to, Bobby, there is really no other choice. Some day, something will happen in your life and you’ll know for yourself. Now, goodbye.”

Fear clutched Bobby’s heart. “No. Don’t say that. Just say so long.”

Smoke reached out and ruffled Bobby’s snowy hair. “All right. So long, pardner.”

Then he turned Thunder’s head and rode off to the north.

Smoke Jensen no sooner got out of the basin that sheltered the Sugarloaf than he discovered that the word had gotten out on the owl hoot telegraph. It came at him in the form of two proddy young gunhands who trotted along the trail toward him. They reined in and touched fingertips to hat brims by way of greeting. Then, the one on the right who had carroty hair and buckteeth below pale green eyes the color of arctic ice, spoke with the over-confident sneer of youth.

“You familiar with these parts, old-timer?”

Old-timer?
Although there was a touch of gray in his hair, Smoke hardly thought of himself as an old-timer. It brought forth a testy response from him.

“I might be, depends on who’s askin’, sonny-boy.”

Chill eyes flashing, the punk leaned toward Smoke in a threatening manner. “I’m askin’, old man, and you’d best be answerin’, hear?”

There was that word again. Damn!
“What is it you’d like to know?”

“We were wonderin’ if you might know where we can find a man we’re lookin’ for.”

Smoke shoved back the brim of his Stetson with his left hand, Thunder’s reins held slackly in the fingers. His right hand rested lightly on his thigh. “It would help if I had a name. There’s not many folks this far from town.”

“Yeah. We done asked at Sulpher Springs. A gent in the saloon said the man we want lived down this way. His name is Smoke Jensen.”

Smoke tensed, but didn’t let it show. “Might I ask what you want with Smoke Jensen?”

That bought him a surly answer. “That’s none of yer business, you old fart.”

That did it!
Smoke dropped all pretense at civility. “Well, I just happen to think it is my business, being that I am Smoke Jensen.”

The lout beside the orange-haired one cut his eyes to his partner. “Gol-dang, Lance, what do we do now?”

“Go for it, Lonnie!”

That had to rank as the stupidest mistake Lance had ever made. He had barely closed his fingers around the butt-grip of his Smith .44 American when he looked down the muzzle of the .45 Colt Peacemaker in the hand of Smoke Jensen. His eyes went wide and his mouth formed an “O,” though he yanked iron anyway.

Smoke shot him before the cylinder of the tilt-top revolver cleared leather. The bullet punched through Lance’s belly and burst out his right side. Reflex fired the Smith and the would-be gunfighter shot himself in the leg. Smoke swung the barrel of his Colt to cover Lonnie. The kid had his Merwin and Hulbert .44 clear of leather, but not aimed. Smoke’s second round ripped through the youth’s liver and angled upward to shatter a portion of rib before exiting from his back. Desperation fought long enough for him to trigger a round.

At such close range it was nearly impossible to miss a man-sized target, but Lonnie did. Hot lead cracked past the right side of Smoke’s chest and splattered on a granite boulder behind him. Smoke fired again and pin-wheeled Lonnie in the breastbone. Shards of bone slashed the young lout’s aorta on the way through to break a vertebra between his shoulder blades. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Bleeding profusely from stomach and thigh, Lance forced himself to draw his left hand gun for another try. Smoke reached out and batted the weapon from the wounded thug’s hand.

“Give it up, Lance,” he told the adolescent. “You’re dying as it is.”

Lance’s defiance came through gritted teeth. “Go to hell, Smoke Jensen.”

Smoke ignored it. “Out of curiosity, why did you draw on me?”

Lance swung his good left leg over the saddle, put both hands on the horn, and slid off his mount, his face white with agony. His right leg gave and he slumped to the ground. The horse jittered and danced a few steps away. Through the entire brief and bloody action, the only movement Thunder had made was to twitch ears at each gunshot. Smoke dismounted and ground-reined the ’Palouse stallion, then knelt beside the dying saddle trash.

“You might as well tell me and go off to the Almighty with a clear conscience.”

“You taken to preachin’ sermons lately?”

“No, but the man who raised me was called Preacher. He taught me to shoot, too.”

“Did a—a damn fine job of it.”

“Save your breath to answer me. Why did you pull iron on me?”

Lance turned those icy green eyes on Smoke. “The word is out that a whole lot of money will be paid for your head.”

Smoke had a fair idea he knew who had made the offer, though he had to ask. “Who’s supposed to pay?”

“A man named Vic…tor…Spectre,” Lance choked out before he died.

High up along the Colorado River, in the corner of Utah, the gang led by Victor Spectre and his partners found the Ute Indians. Their number had grown to twenty-eight. They hungered for whiskey and women in this strict Mormon land. From a distance they eyed the low, brush lodges of the Utes and the square outline of a trading post. The trader would be the Indian agent, Spectre had told them.

“I suggest that three or four of us ride up there first. We can size up the place and distract the agent. The rest of you be ready to come on full tilt when I give the signal,” Spectre told them.

Gus Jaeger and several others nodded sagely. Gus prompted, “Do you want me to come along?”

Victor Spectre cut his eyes to the lean outlaw. “No. You stay here, lead the men.”

“Good enough.”

Spectre picked two of the gang, then he and Tinsdale rode off toward the distant building. The remainder of the gang waited behind a low ground swell.

When they reached the front of the building, which faced east, they saw two burros tied off out at the hitch-rail. The four outlaws dismounted and entered, to find only three white men occupying the trading post. Two of them had the look of prospectors, the third wore a white shirt, with sleeve garters, dark trousers and a string tie. The agent/trader, Spectre judged. Three Indian women stood at a dry goods counter, haggling with the proprietor over a bolt of cloth. No problem there, the gang boss thought. Spectre stepped up to address the Indian agent.

“I say, sir, might you have some whiskey we could purchase?”

“Nope. Ain’t allowed where there’s Injuns.”

Spectre cocked his head and gave the fellow a “man of the world” look. “Oh, come now. My companions and I are fairly parched after being a week in Utah. Surely you must have a little—ah—private stock set aside?” A hand in one pocket, he let the jingle of gold coins sound clearly.

Avarice glowed in the gray eyes of the trader. “I might be able to find something. It’ll have to be after I get rid of these wimmin. Can’t have them knowin’ there’s liquor around. They’re Utes and their bucks would burn this place down for a swallow apiece.”

“Very well, then.” Spectre crossed to the door and stepped outside. From a vest pocket, he took a highly polished gold watch and lined the open face cover up with the sun. The flash could be seen clearly by the waiting outlaws.

They came down on the trading post like the Tartar warriors of Gengis Khan. By then, Victor Spectre had reentered the trading post. He crossed to the agent/trader and grabbed him by the front of his shirt.

He put his face close to that of the suddenly frightened man and growled at him. “Your strongbox. Where is it?”

Consternation registered a moment before anger washed it away. “You are going to rob me? You’ll not get much, and you’ll not get away with it. Harvey, Lem,” he called to the sourdoughs at the small bar across the room.

Harvey and Lem could do little to help him. They faced into the drawn six-guns of Ralph Tinsdale, Nate Miller, and Judson Reese. Squawking like pudgy hens, the Ute women made for the door. Victor Spectre dragged the spluttering trader across the room and rammed him against a wall.

“Tell me now and I might let you live.”

Raising a trembling hand, the meek Indian agent pointed to the bar. “There, under the counter. It just has a key lock.”

“Where’s the key?”

“In it, during business hours. It’s where I keep my whiskey.”

Spectre motioned to Reese and Miller. “Clean it out.”

That’s when shouts of alarm in the Ute language came from outside. The outlaws swarmed around the agency trading post and began to shoot down the helpless Ute men, who were armed with only lances, bows, and arrows. Women screamed and the children ran in panic.

Laughing, Farlee Huntoon took aim on a boy of about nine and shot him between the shoulder blades. He eared back the hammer to pot the child’s little brother, then yelped in pain as an arrow creased the upper side of his left shoulder.

“Owie! That damn buck done drew blood,” he bellowed as he turned to one side and fired into the face of the Ute who had shot the arrow. “Owie,” he repeated for emphasis.

Those among the Ute men who had not already been killed or seriously wounded began to flee. They dragged along what women and children they could. The gang spread out and methodically began to exterminate the remaining males. The old women they let go. The young ones they corralled in the Council lodge, a large brush shelter. Back inside the trading post, Victor Spectre examined the booty.

“You were correct about one thing. There isn’t a lot of gold here,” he said to the proprietor. “Too bad. Had there been money enough, I might have been persuaded not to do this,” he added casually as he lifted his revolver.

“No! Oh, please, no!” the Indian agent pleaded. “There’s—there’s more whiskey. In the root cellar,” he bargained with his life.

“We’ll find it,” Spectre assured him, then shot the man dead.

By the time the two prospectors had been killed and stripped of their small pouches of placer gold, the last of the Ute men had run off with the women and children they had rescued. Gus Jaeger gathered the gunhawks and tolled them off by twos to make their pick of the young Ute women and girls. The female population of the Ute village began to shriek and wail the moment the first pair were dragged from the Council lodge.

Sally Jensen sat in the old wooden rocking chair on the front porch at the Sugarloaf. The rocker played a game of tag with the tail of a plump, orange-and-white tabby that lay at her side. So far the cat was winning, the wooden bow had not yet made contact as the tail whipped in and out beneath it. She glanced up at the angle of the sun. The hands would be in for supper before long.

She looked across the open yard to where the ranch cook bent over his pots of spicy beef stew, thick gumbo, and New Orleans-style rice and beans. A Cajun who had drifted north and west of his native bayous, he had proven to be a natural with the hearty fare of the High Lonesome country. Though where he obtained the okra she would never know. The summers were too short and mild to grow it here. He looked up and saw the expression she did not know she wore. A wide smile flashed in the swarthy Acadian face and he spoke with words he hoped sounded reassuring.

“Won’t no harm come to Mr. Smoke, Miss Sally. I gar-ron-tee it.”

How did he know I was worried about Smoke?
Sally gave a little shiver and looked expectantly toward the direction from which the hands would ride up on the headquarters as she answered him.

“I know that, Jules. I was…only thinking.”

“He be one brave mon, Miss Sally. Smart, too. He not be steppin’ in front of some
sacre bleu
outlaw bullet.” Jules Thibedeux nodded his head in confidence and understanding and went back to his cooking.

Sally heard hoofbeats then. She came to her boots and marched to the head of the steps. She paused on the second one, her face lighted by the gold-orange of a lowering sun. Riding beside Ike Mitchell she recognized the slender figure of Bobby Harris.

Bobby had taken to sleeping in his old room in the main house in the five nights since Smoke’s departure. His attitude bothered her. He had not as yet returned to school in Big Rock, and although content to teach him at home, she worried about his adjustment to children his age.

Impatient with herself, she banished the thought and put a smile on her face. Bobby would be moody enough. He saw her worried about Smoke also. She ran fingers through her dark hair and tossed the curls to give them springiness. Then she stamped her foot in vexation when a tiny voice in her head asked her where Smoke was right then.

Smoke Jensen drifted into Wyoming that day at mid-morning, near the small town of Baggs. He had been slowed because of a pulled tendon on his packhorse. The normally sure-footed animal had stepped into a prairie dog hole and badly strained its canon tendon. It limped and fought the lead. He would have to rent another one or trade off at the livery in Baggs.

With that decided for him, he stopped thinking about it. The skyline of Baggs seemed to grow out of the tall, waving prairie grass. He saw the tall spire of a grain silo rearing on the horizon, then the slender one of a church. The town had grown since he had last passed through. Then the blocky shapes of the business district crept above the rim of the world. At a half mile distance, Smoke heard the barking dogs. Shrill cries of children came next. A cow mooed in a backyard. A wagon, badly in need of axle grease, shrieked its way along the main street. Smoke counted half a dozen new houses.

Smoke felt his initial tension sloughing off. Too early, he realized as he swung off of the trail onto a maintained roadway. Two local farmers, their wagons stopped opposite one another to swap tall tales, looked hard at him with open suspicion. Beyond them, at the first house on the edge of town, three children, barefoot, shirtless boys, stared solemnly. The youngest popped a thumb into his mouth as Smoke rode by. A buxom woman rushed from the side door to scoop them up and hurry them inside. Something, or someone, bad had been here recently, Smoke reasoned. He guided Thunder to the livery first.

He found it where it had been before. The same bent, stooped old man came forward to take the reins of Thunder when Smoke dismounted. The sturdy, buckskin-clad gunfighter nodded toward his packhorse.

“I’ve got a horse with a strained tendon. I’d like to trade him or rent another if I have to.”