Ambush of the Mountain Man (8 page)

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Authors: William W. Johnstone

BOOK: Ambush of the Mountain Man
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“Maybe that's why he's dead,” Macklin said, flipping his butt into the coals of the fire. “If Angus would've kicked his ass a few times when he was growin' up, ‘stead've lettin' him get away with being a horse's ass, maybe he'd of learned to keep his mouth shut.”
Jacoby stared at Macklin. “I thought you was his best friend.”
Macklin shrugged. “I was, but that don't mean I didn't see how dumb he could be sometimes. Hell, my old pappy used to take a razor strop to me if'n I got outta line, an' I soon learned to keep my mouth shut if'n I didn't have something worthwhile to say.”
He yawned and got to his feet. “I'm gonna get those tents ready. Why don't you fry us up some fatback and beans so's we can eat ‘fore it gets too late?”
Jacoby grinned. “I want to know who elected me the cook of this little expedition.”
Macklin looked back over his shoulder as he began to unload their tents off their packhorse. “Hey, it don't make no never mind to me. You can set up the tents an' I'll cook if'n you want.”
Jacoby thought about this for a moment. At least he'd be near the warm campfire if he was cooking.
“No, that's all right. You do the tents, I'll do the cooking.”
T
HIRTEEN
Sarah finished with the last customer of the day and proceeded to lock up the general store. Ed and Peg Jackson had been so impressed with her work that they were now giving her almost complete authority in the running of the store when they weren't there.
Peg had grown to like her so much she'd even been hinting that if Sarah would like to attend Sunday services at their church, there were some interesting single men she would like to introduce her to.
When Sarah had finished putting the money and charge slips in the drawer behind the counter and extinguished all the lanterns, she stepped out the back door and pulled it shut behind her, turning a key in the lock. Moving quickly, she walked down the alleyway to the buckboard she'd put there in the early hours of the morning. She'd stolen the wagon from the livery stable the night before instead of just renting it. She didn't want anything pointing to her to give a posse or any of Jensen's friends any leads on where to look for him when he turned up missing.
She climbed up onto the hurricane deck and kicked the brake with her foot, releasing it. Clicking her tongue, she whipped the twin reins against the horses' butts and urged them to get moving. It was just before five o'clock and the daylight was fading fast, and Sarah had a long way to ride—all the way out to the Sugarloaf Ranch.
She wasn't sure just how she was going to handle getting Smoke Jensen under her control, but she knew she'd figure out something. She always had in the past. Her daddy had taught her well, never telling her how to do something, just telling her what he wanted accomplished and letting her figure out the best method to get it done.
About the only thing that bothered her about what she was about to do was the thought of Sally Jensen and how it was going to affect her. She'd liked the lady from the first moment she'd met her, and Sally had been kind and considerate to her. It was a shame that Sarah was going to have to break her heart, but it couldn't be helped. Smoke Jensen was an evil man; he had to be to have done what he'd done to her brother.
As she bounced along in the buckboard, slowing as the light faded and the potholes in the road became less visible, she wondered how it was that an intelligent woman like Sally Jensen couldn't see how bad her husband was. She shook her head. She'd seen it before, women so besotted with love that they took up with men no decent lady would even talk to, much less marry or fall in love with.
She often saw these pathetic creatures when she went to town, where they walked around with heavy makeup on trying to hide the bruises the brutes they'd married seemed to give them on a regular basis.
She tried to salve her conscience by thinking how much better off Sally would be without a man like Smoke Jensen. Heck, she thought, he probably beat her when he got drunk, like a lot of those men in Pueblo did to their wives. In time, Sally would probably thank her lucky stars that he was gone.
Feeling better, Sarah turned her mind to ways that she might be able to get the drop on Jensen without any of his hands or his wife knowing she was involved. Sally knew too much about her, including the city she was from, to let her know she was involved. She needed to get the drop on Jensen and get him out to the trail without anyone from Big Rock realizing she had anything to do with it.
She slipped her hand inside the purse lying on the wooden seat next to her, and let her fingers curl over the walnut handle of the snub-nosed .38-caliber Smith and Wesson pistol that lay nestled there. Though she'd never shot anyone before, she knew she was capable of it, especially when she thought of how pale and shrunken her brother had looked in his coffin when they'd buried him out on the ranch where they'd both grown up.
Her eyes filled with tears when she pictured Johnny lying there, looking somehow smaller than he had when he was alive and being his usual obnoxious self. Angrily wiping the tears away, she leaned forward and urged the horses on, anxious to do what needed to be done.
 
 
She pulled the buckboard to a halt when she saw the lights from the Jensens' cabin through the trees. She knew from talking to Ed and Peg Jackson that the Jensens didn't have any dogs or chickens near the house to raise an alarm, so she shouldn't have any problem getting close to the house without being heard, as long as she was careful. She wasn't sure what she'd do then, but figured she'd think of something—she always did.
She climbed down off the buckboard and bent over, pulled the rear hem of her dress up between her legs, and stuck it under her belt to make the dress look like trousers. She didn't want it getting caught on any underbrush to leave traces of her having been there.
She took her pistol out of the purse, stuck it under her belt in the small of her back, and began to walk quietly toward the house in the distance, being as careful as she could not to step on any sticks or piles of leaves.
When she got to the house, she moved over under one of the windows and slowly raised her head up to peek inside. She saw Smoke and Sally talking quietly together as they ate supper at the kitchen table.
Occasionally, one or the other would smile and laugh softly at something the other said. Sarah pulled her head down and squatted under the window, wondering what she was going to do now. If worse came to worst and she didn't get another chance, she'd have to go inside the house and take them both, though she really didn't want to do that if there were any other way. Sally wasn't involved in this, and Sarah didn't want to have to scare her half to death. It'd be much better for the both of them if Jensen just disappeared and was never heard from again and Sally never found out what happened to him. That way, maybe she'd think he'd just got tired of married life and run off to live alone somewhere.
Just as she'd about resigned herself to going into the house, she heard Sally say, “I'm going to bed, dear. Are you coming?”
Sarah's heart began to beat faster when she heard Smoke reply, “Not just yet, sweetheart. I think I'll have a cigar out on the porch and another cup of coffee first.”
Sarah peeked in the window and saw Sally give Smoke a quick kiss. “Good night then. I'll see you in the morning.”
Smoke laughed. “Unless I wake you up when I come to bed,” he joked.
“Don't you dare,” Sally said with a mock frown. And then she smiled coyly and added, “Unless you plan to make it worth my while.”
“Don't I always?” Smoke called as he laughed and moved out onto the front porch with a coffee cup in his hand.
Sarah waited until Smoke had finished half his cigar and most of his coffee, giving Sally time to get to sleep, before she moved around and walked up to the porch.
When Smoke noticed her, he got to his feet, a slight frown on his face. “Why, hello, Sarah,” he said, concern in his voice. “Is anything wrong?”
“Please, Mr. Jensen,” Sarah said in her most helpless voice, keeping it low so as not to awaken Sally. “Come with me quickly. I need your help.”
“Let me just wake Sally up,” Smoke began.
“No! There's no time for that,” Sarah pleaded. “Come quickly. My buckboard is just up the road a ways and I have something in it you need to see.”
She turned around and moved at a fast pace down the road away from his house, not giving him time to think about it as he followed her down the dark path.
“Is someone hurt?” Smoke asked as he caught up with her and walked by her side.
“You'll see,” Sarah said, avoiding the question. “It's just around the corner here.”
When they came to the buckboard, Smoke leaned over the side, looking into the bed of the wagon. All he saw was a pile of blankets and some rope coiled up in the corner of the wagon. “I don't see . . . ” he began, turning around to find Sarah standing a few yards away with a pistol in her hand aimed at his gut.
“What the . . . ?”
“Kindly put your hands up, Mr. Jensen,” she said, her voice suddenly hard and flat.
He took a tentative step toward her and she eared back the hammer on the pistol with an audible click. “Please, Mr. Jensen, don't make me shoot you here. Just do as I say and you may live to see morning.”
Smoke frowned as he raised his hands over his head.
“Now, turn around and climb into the back of the buckboard,” Sarah ordered.
“Why don't you tell me what this is all about?” Smoke said as he climbed up into the bed of the wagon.
“Don't you turn around, just keep looking in that direction,” Sarah ordered.
Smoke shrugged and did as she said. “Is it all right if I ask you what this is all about?” he said without turning to look at her.
Instead of answering him, Sarah reached under the seat of the buckboard and pulled out an iron crowbar she'd put there earlier. Swinging as hard as she could with one hand, she hit Smoke in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious onto his face.
She put down her gun and climbed up into the wagon with him. Taking some short lengths of rope she'd prepared earlier, she tied his hands together behind his back and then tied his feet together. Once that was done, she took some fence wire and wound it tightly around the rope, so that he couldn't possibly undo the knots she'd tied.
When she was finished, she noticed blood was pouring from a wound in the back of his head, so she took a handkerchief from her purse and tied a makeshift bandage around his head to slow the bleeding. Once it stopped, she checked to make sure he was still breathing. After all, she didn't want him to die on her—that would be too easy. She wanted him to suffer for a while, and then she wanted him to know why he was being killed before he died.
She wanted him to know that killing her brother Johnny had caused his death.
She climbed up into the seat and turned the buckboard around. She had to hurry. She wanted to be a dozen miles away before Sally Jensen woke up tomorrow morning and found her husband missing. By the time the alarm was raised and they figured out what had happened, she should be almost home.
 
 
Moving as fast as she could over the road in the near-total blackness, Sarah took almost three hours to make her way to the outskirts of Big Rock, where she hoped to find the men from her father's ranch waiting for her along with Carl and Mac.
It'd been three full days since she'd sent Mac and Carl out to wait for them, so the men certainly should have been able to make the trip from Pueblo to here in that time.
Even looking for them and expecting to see them, Sarah almost jumped out of the heavy coat she was wearing when a dark figure materialized out of the darkness and grabbed the reins to the horses pulling the buckboard.
“Is that you, Miss Sarah?” a gruff voice called.
She took a moment to catch her breath and try to calm her racing heart. “Yes. Who are you?”
“I'm Jimmy Corbett, ma'am,” the voice called back as the figure moved closer so she could make out the face.
She recognized the man then. He'd been with her father for several years, though she didn't know him all that well personally. He was a little older than she and her brother, so Johnny had never run around with him much like he had some of the younger hands on the ranch.
“Well, Jimmy, you scared me out of two years' growth coming up on me out of the darkness like that,” she complained, but her voice was level and there was no malice in it.
“Sorry, ma'am,” he said, taking his hat off and standing there like a schoolboy. “Clete told us to make sure it was you ‘fore we called out or anything, an' in the darkness it was kind'a hard to tell.”
“That's all right, Jimmy. Where is Clete?”
Jimmy pointed up a slight rise off to her right. “He's up the top of that there hill, ma'am.” He hesitated. “It's gonna be kind'a bumpy ridin' that buckboard up there. You want I should take the reins and let you ride my hoss?”
Truth to tell, Sarah's butt was aching from the long ride on the hurricane deck of the wagon, so she readily agreed. Even a saddle was better than the hard boards of the wagon seat and the continual bouncing of the wagon.
“Sure, Jimmy. Show me the way.”
 
 
It didn't take long to get Cletus and the other men awake and some fresh coffee brewed. Though Sarah much preferred hot tea, she gratefully accepted a tin mug of the strong brew to help ward off the chill of the frigid night air. She hadn't realized how cold it was when she'd left town heading out to the Jensen spread, and now she was about frozen clear through.
She was about half through with her cup when Cletus finished checking out Smoke Jensen in the back of the buckboard and approached her next to the fire. Carl Jacoby was sitting next to her and Dan Macklin was on the other side. Neither had asked her how she'd managed to get Jensen in the back of the wagon, both figuring she'd tell them soon enough.

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