Authors: William W. Johnstone

Ambush of the Mountain Man (15 page)

BOOK: Ambush of the Mountain Man

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“Yeah, Blake,” another voice on the other side hollered. “Get your ass back here with the rest of us âfore we accidentally put a bullet in your butt thinkin' you're Jensen.”

As he passed a tight grove of trees, Smoke leaned forward and dug his heels into his mount, causing it to break into a full gallop ahead.

“Hey, what the . . . ?” a voice yelled.

And then, another screamed, “Yo, Clete! Somethin's wrong with Charlie Blake. He's ridin' like a bat outta hell!”

The man on Smoke's right kicked his horse into a gallop also, wanting to see why his friend was racing ahead. As he pulled closer, he realized it wasn't Charlie Blake on the horse ahead of him.

“Damn! That ain't Charlie, fellers, that's Jensen,” he screamed, pulling his pistol out and opening fire.

He might have caught Smoke, but a branch suddenly appeared in front of him and whipped across his face, drawing blood and making him slow his horse to keep from falling off.

The ghostly figure on horseback in front of him disappeared into the gloomy snowstorm ahead.

Cletus and Sarah rode over to Sam Jackson. “You all right, Sam?” Cletus asked.

Jackson sleeved blood off his face where the tree limb had slashed his cheek. “Yeah, I'll be all right,” he growled, leaning over to spit blood from his mouth.

“You say that wasn't Charlie up there?” Sarah asked, looking ahead into the snow flurries.

“Naw, I don't think so,” Jackson said. “He had Charlie's coat on, but he didn't sit a horse like Charlie an' he looked to be about thirty pounds heavier and five or six inches taller.”

“But how did he get Charlie's coat and horse?” Cletus asked.

Jackson looked back over his shoulder. “I don't know, Boss, but I'll bet we ain't gonna find out what happened from Charlie either.”

Cletus nodded. “All right, men, let's double back a ways and see if we can find Charlie's body.”

Sarah took a deep breath and felt a deep sorrow. She didn't know Charlie Blake well, but if he was dead, then it was her fault for letting Smoke Jensen escape.

She shook her head as she pulled her horse's head around. How was she going to live with herself if more men were killed because of her? she wondered.

T
WENTY-THREE

As he rode hell-bent-for-leather through the deepening snow and into the teeth of the freezing north wind after capturing the man's horse, Smoke leaned as close to his mount's head as he could to avoid being scraped out of the saddle by a tree limb. He had to trust the horse's instinct not to run headlong into a tree or off a cliff, and so all he could do for the first couple of hundred yards of their flight was to hang on for dear life and hope for the best.

At least it beat a bullet in the back.

After about ten minutes at a full gallop, Smoke raised his head and looked back over his shoulder. The snow was still blowing, and all he could see was a solid sheet of white behind him.

He slowed the horse and cocked his head to the side, listening to see if he could hear any pursuit over the howling of the wind.

Nothing. He turned back around, pulled his hat down tight, and rode on into the wind toward the mountain up ahead, moving slower now to give his horse a rest. He knew that if he could make the slopes up ahead before his captors caught up to him, he would have the advantage for the first time since this adventure began.

He smiled grimly. And then it would be time to pay them back.

Angus MacDougal was just sitting down to a solitary supper, served by his housekeeper/cook, when the door banged open and a breathless Daniel Macklin barged in.

Angus threw down his napkin and smiled, evidently thinking the group of men had arrived with Smoke Jensen as their prisoner.

“Where is that son of a bitch?” Angus growled, moving toward the hat rack in the corner with his belt and holstered pistol hanging on it.

Macklin didn't understand at first what Angus was referring to. “Uh . . . where is who?” he asked, taking his hat off and holding it in front of him like a shield.

Angus sighed as he buckled on his gun belt. “Jensen, of course,” he answered. “You remember him, don't you? The bastard who gunned my Johnny down? The man you went to Big Rock to get for me?”

“Uh . . . that's what I come to tell you, Mr. MacDougal.” Few men in the world called Angus MacDougal by his first name, and certainly not an employee as low as Daniel Macklin.

Angus knew something was wrong. “Well, spit it out, man. What the hell's going on?”

“We were âbout half a day's ride from here when Jensen somehow managed to get loose and run away,” Macklin finally managed to say.

“What?” Angus yelled, advancing on Macklin as if he were about to kill him.

Macklin held up his hands. “Now wait a minute, Mr. MacDougal. He ain't gotten awayâleastways not all the way away.”

Angus slapped his thigh with his hand. “Now just what the hell does that mean?” he growled.

“He didn't get no horse, an' he's on foot in a bad storm some miles from the nearest mountain. He's runnin' on foot through the woods with Cletus and the rest of the men on horseback after him.”

The redness began to fade a little bit from Angus's face at this news. “Oh, well, then, it shouldn't take Clete long to run him down then, should it?”

Macklin shook his head. “No, sir, I don't think so.”

Suddenly Angus cocked an eyebrow at Macklin. “If that's so, then why did Clete send you here?”

“Well, the fact of the matter is that Jensen used to be a mountain man, sir, and we . . . that is, Cletus thought that if he did manage to make the mountains, we might ought'a have a few more men out looking for him.”

Angus took a couple of long, slow breaths to try to calm himself. He found he did his best thinking when he was calm, not when he was in a fit of rage.

After a moment, he nodded. “I guess I can't argue with that logic,” he said. “Let me see, you got about ten, eleven men up there now. Another ten or so ought'a be plenty. With twenty men I can run a search of the mountain that a squirrel couldn't get through.”

He pulled out his pocket watch and opened the gold clasp. “Well, it's too late now to round up any good men. We'll get to bed early and be in Pueblo at dawn. We should be able to find ten men who want to make a little extra money without any problem.”

Or who want to make the richest rancher for a hundred miles happy, Macklin thought.

“You have anything to eat âfore you got on the way here?” he asked, suddenly in a better frame of mind now that he knew he'd have the personal pleasure of hunting Jensen down like the dog he was. Hell, it might even be fun running the bastard down like a deer or a bear.

“No, sir,” Macklin answered, his mouth watering at the smell of the pot roast and fresh vegetables he could smell on the table in the next room.

Angus nodded. “Well, then, head on over to the bunkhouse and I'll have my cook send you over a plate.”

“Thank you, sir,” Macklin said, trying to hide his anger. Here he was busting his butt to help the old man out and he wasn't good enough to break bread with him in his house. The ungrateful asshole!

The next morning, just as the sun was peeking over the eastern slope mountains, Angus and Macklin were knocking on Sheriff Wally Tupper's door in Pueblo.

A sleepy Wally opened the door, his hair disarranged and his face creased with wrinkles from his pillow. “Yeah?” he asked gruffly before he saw who was on his doorstep.

Then it was, “Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. MacDougal. Come on in and I'll have the wife fix you up some coffee and breakfast.”

“Don't have time for that, Wally,” Angus said, brushing past the sheriff into his house as if he owned it. “I need you to get dressed and help me round up ten or fifteen hard men to go on the trail with me.”

“You mean, like a posse?” Wally asked, covering a wide yawn with the back of his hand.

“Kind'a,” Angus replied enigmatically.

“Why . . . what for, Mr. MacDougal?” Wally asked as he pulled his trousers up under his nightshirt and sat on a couch to put on his socks.

“We're going polecat hunting,” Angus said with an evil grin.

“What?” Wally asked again, pausing with one sock on and the other in his hand.

“My men were on the way back here with Smoke Jensen in tow, when he managed to get away. He's on foot and running for the mountains as we speak. I need some men to help me roust him out of those woods if Cletus doesn't find him first.”

“But Mr. MacDougal, Jensen ain't broke no laws that I know of.”

“So what?” Angus asked.

“Well, I can't hardly send no posse after a man who ain't done nothing wrong.”

Angus reached over, grabbed the front of Wally's nightshirt, and jerked his face close. “Wallace Tupper, if you don't want to spend the rest of your miserable life shooting stray dogs for fifty cents a piece in this town instead of being sheriff, you'd better make up your mind who you're gonna listen to . . . me or those goddamned law books you're always reading!”

“But Mr. MacDougal,” Wally protested.

“But nothing, Wally,” Angus growled. “Now I'm gonna go on over to the cafÃ© on Main Street and have myself some coffee and maybe some eggs and bacon. If you aren't there with at least ten good men, by the time I finish, I'll assume you're out hunting for dogs to shoot.”

Less than an hour later, while Angus was still sopping up egg yolks with a folded piece of pancake, Wally Tupper appeared at the cafÃ© with twelve men. All of the men had a hard look about them and all were armed to the teeth.

Wally walked into the cafÃ©, his hat in his hands. “Uh, I managed to get you twelve men, Mr. MacDougal,” he said, not willing to meet Angus's eyes directly.

“That's a good man, Wally. I knew you'd come through for me as usual.”

“I told âem since this wasn't an official posse, that you'd be paying them for the trip,” Wally said, his voice low and uncertain, as if he were asking Angus instead of telling him how it was going to be.

Angus waved a hand. “No problem, Wally. Since this is personal, I really can't expect the town to pay for it, now can I?”

“Uh . . . no, sir. I guess not.”

“Now, while I'm finishing up here, I want you to get a couple of packhorses and go on over to the general store and get a couple of crates of dynamite, some cans of black powder, lots of extra ammunition of various calibers, and enough grub for the men to be gone a week or so.”

“Is there anything else?” Wally asked, struggling to keep his anger at being ordered around like he was one of Angus's employees out of his voice.

Angus shook his head. “No, I think that ought to do it for right now.”

Wally put his hat on and walked from the cafÃ©. As he walked toward the general store, he thought to himself, Crazy old coot! Serve his ass right if Jensen somehow manages to blow his fool head off. And just where does he get off ordering me around like I'm some ranch hand anyway?

By the time he got to the store, he was so mad he could hardly unclench his teeth to say hello to the proprietor when greeted.

He pointed behind the counter at the hundreds of boxes of ammunition. “Seymour, I'm gonna need a bunch of cartridges and other things, and I'm gonna need âem fast.”

T
WENTY-FOUR

Sally sat on a wide settee in Dr. Spalding's parlor holding Mary Carson's hand. Mary was quietly sobbing into a lace handkerchief. Across the room, Pearlie and Cal sat in high-armed easy chairs, both of them acutely uncomfortable in the presence of a crying woman.

Finally, after what seemed like years but was only a couple of hours, Cotton Spalding emerged from his inner treatment room drying his hands on a towel. He looked dog-tired, with red, bloodshot eyes and dark circles under the eyes. He'd been continually by Monte's side during the long night, and it showed.

Mary looked up quickly, an unspoken question in her eyes. Cotton smiled at her and moved to take her hand. “He's going to be just fine, Mary. He's awake now and I can find no evidence of any brain damage or other infirmity, other than a complete amnesia about the events of the last couple of days, which isn't unusual in these cases.”

“Oh, thank God!” Mary breathed, looking skyward.

Sally Jensen looked over at the boys, her eyes brimming with tears of thankfulness, while both Cal and Pearlie grinned from ear to ear.

“Now, he's going to have to remain quiet for a week or two, and I'm going to want you to feed him plenty of beef stew and soup with cream in it to get his strength back,” Cotton said, his manner becoming more professional.

“Don't you worry, Doc Spalding,” Mary said, nodding her head as she spoke. “I'll make sure that ornery galoot does exactly what you tell him to.”

“It isn't going to be easy, Mary,” Cotton said. “He's already chomping at the bit to get back to work. He asked me who was going to take care of his town if he lay around on his butt all day.”

They all laughed at that. It was just like Monte Carson to put the welfare of the townspeople ahead of his own well-being. It was one reason why he'd never had any serious opposition for reelection as sheriff since Smoke had recommended him for the job when the town was first formed.

After the doctor went into another room to see to another patient, Mary turned to Sally. “Thank you for staying here by my side until he woke up, Sally, but now it's time for you to go see about your man.”

“Will you be all right?” Sally asked as she got to her feet, anxious to get back on the trail and go after the men who'd taken her Smoke.

“Of course I will, now that I know Monte is doing all right,” Mary said. “Now you and the boys go on and bring Smoke back here safe and sound.”

Sally leaned down and gave Mary a hug. “You tell Monte we'll be thinking of him and to get well soon,” she said, and then she led the boys out the front door.

“You want us to go get Louis to ride with us, Miss Sally?” Pearlie asked.

She looked up at him. “Of course, Pearlie. Louis would never forgive us if we left him out of this fracas,” she answered.

An hour later, they'd picked up their horses at the livery and the four of them were on the trail toward Pueblo, hoping against hope that they were going to be in time to find Smoke alive.

“Hey, men, over here!” Wally Stevens yelled through his cupped hands.

As Cletus and Sarah and the other men rode slowly up to him, they found him standing over the snow-covered dead body of Charlie Blake. Blake was lying on his back with a gaping hole in his throat and frozen blood all around him. Luckily, they'd gotten to him before the scavengers did.

The storm was winding down, and there was even the hint of sunlight peeking through the clouds as the snow disappeared and the wind began to die down. They'd spent an uncomfortable night before the dawn came and they could resume the search for Charlie's body.

Cletus felt a raw knot of anger in his gut. Damn Angus MacDougal and damn Smoke Jensen for this. A good man lay dead whose only fault was trying to help out a friend.

Sarah brushed away tears from her eyes. She didn't want the men to see her crying or to guess the reason. If she hadn't helped Smoke Jensen escape last night, Charlie Blake would still be alive.

Of course, she was intelligent enough to know that Jensen would by now be dead at the hands of her father, but that was only one life. She had a feeling that Jensen was going to cause a lot more deaths before this little trip was over. She wondered what her father would think about that and whether he would consider Johnny's death was worth the deaths of so many other good men.

She grimaced. Of course he would. In Angus's mind, there was no one who was nearly as important as a member of the MacDougal clan. No, she thought with disgust, he wouldn't worry one bit if it cost ten men their lives as long as he got a chance to avenge Johnny's death.

“Pick him up and put him across one of the packhorses,” Cletus said.

“And be quick about it!” Billy Free growled, pulling out his six-gun and checking the loads. “That bastard Jensen has to be made to pay for this!”

Sarah looked over at the young man, whose face was flushed and red in the morning light.

“He was only defending himself, Billy,” she said in an even tone, glancing from Billy's face to the mountain slopes a couple of miles off in the distance where Jensen had disappeared.

“How can you take his side?” the boy almost screamed. “Charlie Blake was a friend of mine!”

“Charlie was my friend too, Billy,” Sarah answered. “And Johnny was my brother and I've got to tell all of you, I'm beginning to wonder if he was worth all this.”

The men began to look around at each other, wondering what the hell Sarah was talking about.

“I'm sure Sarah means that she hates to see anyone else get killed because of her taking Jensen prisoner, isn't that right, Sarah?” Cletus said, trying to change her meaning to one the men could understand.

Sarah lowered her head and quickly blinked away the tears in her eyes. “Yes, of course that's what I mean,” she said in a firm voice. “I have no sympathy for murderers and gunmen, but I also don't want to put the rest of your lives at risk to avenge the death of one of my family members.”

“Don't you worry none, Miss Sarah,” Bob Bartlett called. He and Juan Gomez and Billy Free had joined up with the group right after Smoke had ridden off into the storm. “We ain't gonna let no gunslick get away with killin' our friends and neighbors. We ain't gonna stop until we've dragged him outta those mountains feet-firstâright, boys?” he yelled, raising his rifle into the air.

The crowd all hollered their assent, and a couple even shot off their weapons into the air.

Lord help us, Cletus thought, looking around at the men as they yelled and hollered. We've gone from a posse to a lynch mob and all it took was one death. I wonder what we'll become after several more of us are killed. Will we still be human, and will we ever be able to forget what's about to happen here in the mountains in the next few days?

“Come on, Clete!” Jason Biggs yelled. “Let's go get that bastard!”

Cletus held up his hands for silence, trying to quiet the mob the men had become. “Listen up, men,” he said, keeping his voice level and emotionless. “Take a look at Charlie's body lyin' across that packhorse,” he said, inclining his head toward the mount. “You'll notice he ain't wearin' no guns, and if I'm not mistaken, he probably had a long gun or two in his saddle boots on his horse.”

“Yeah, so what?” Biggs asked sarcastically. “That just means that son of a bitch Jensen stole âem.”

“What it means,” Cletus tried to explain, “is if we go charging up into those mountains, Jensen is gonna pick us off like flies. He's an experienced mountain man who knows what he's doing, and now that we know he's armed with a long gun and a couple of six-killers, we have to be smarter and more careful than we've ever been before or most of us ain't gonna be coming home.”

“You sound like you're plumb scared to death of that son of a bitch, Clete,” Sam Jackson said, disgust in his voice.

“Respecting the abilities of your enemies ain't being scared, Sam,” Cletus answered, not rising to the bait in Jackson's tone, “it's being smart. You want to go hightailing it up into those woods, yelling and screaming and not paying caution no mind, you go right ahead. I'll do my best to find your dead carcass and get it back to your wife so she and your kids can plant you proper.”

Cletus's words sobered the men and quieted them down a bit so they weren't so boisterous. “Now, I'm still the leader of this group, an' anybody don't think so is welcome to mosey on along by themselves, but whoever stays is gonna do what I say or I'll put a bullet in their head myself. You all got my drift?” he asked.

There were mumbles of assent, but no one left and no one disputed his right of leadership. “Now, here's what we're gonna do,” he said, motioning the men to draw closer so they could hear his plans.

“First off, we're gonna pair up. No one rides alone or gets out of sight of his partner. Secondly, we're gonna ride with our weapons in our hands, loaded up six and six and the hammer cocked at all times. We're not going to give Jensen a chance to take any more of us out without a fight.”

As the men nodded their agreement, he went on with his attack strategy. “Now that the storm has quit, he won't be able to move around the mountain without leaving tracks, so we've got to be careful not to get crosswise with one another and spoil his trail. We're gonna spread out, each pair staying in eye contact with another pair, and we're gonna criss-cross those woods until we pick up his trail, and then we're gonna dog him until we catch him.”

“And then we're gonna blow his damn head off!” Billy Free shouted.

Cletus silenced him with a glare. “No, and then we're going to try and capture him, if we can do it without losing any more men,” Cletus said. “Angus MacDougal is still paying for this trip and he wants Jensen alive, if at all possible. So, if we can, we're going to try and take him back to the ranch in one piece.”

“What if he don't agree to that proposition, Boss?” George Jones asked.

Cletus smiled grimly. “Then we'll blow his ass to hell and back!”

When the men all laughed at this, Cletus said, “Now, let's make a quick camp and get some hot coffee and some good grub into our bellies. It's gonna get awful cold tonight, and I don't want to give our position away by making any campfires. We'll eat a hot meal now, and tonight we'll try and have a cold camp.”

“And I want to add another hundred dollars to the man who gets the drop on Jensen so we can capture him,” Sarah said.

“What does a man get who puts lead in the son of a bitch?” Billy Free asked sarcastically.

Sarah stared at him. “I'll let my daddy deal with that man,” she said, “but I don't think he'll appreciate what my daddy does.”

BOOK: Ambush of the Mountain Man

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