Spirit Of The Mountain Man/ordeal Of The Mountain Man (Pinnacle Westerns) (13 page)

“Where are you meeting Clyde tomorrow and what are you going to do with the money in North Platte?”

Defeat washed away the relief on Joe’s face. “If you know that much, there’s no way I can keep you from learnin’ the rest. We’re gonna hook up with Clyde outside Julesburg. On this side. The money from all the bank robberies is to be put in a special account.”

“Whose name is on that account?” Smoke leaned menacingly closer, the tomahawk raised and ready.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t or won’t? The tomahawk caressed the craven’s cheek.

“I’ll be killed if I tell you.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll be a long way from there, safe in jail.”

That’s when he saw the light. Eyes fixed on the marshal’s badge on Smoke’s shirt, he spoke softly. “Someone named Victor Spectre.”

Satisfied he had the right trail, Smoke and his posse went on to kill or capture the other band of outlaws. With the bank robbers jailed and more than $80,000 returned to the banks from which it had been taken, Smoke decided to look into the background of this mystery man, Victor Spectre.

Smoke Jensen sent inquiries through the network of friendly lawmen he had developed over the years. The answers that came back were disturbing to say the least. From the U.S. Marshal’s offices in Kansas City, Missouri, and Fort Smith, Arkansas, he learned that Victor Spectre was considered an independently wealthy socialite in St. Louis. A philanthropist, he had endowed a library and had built a school in a downtrodden neighborhood of the Mississippi River metropolis. The Chief of Police in St. Louis had been even more effusive.

“It is my delight to state unequivocally that Mr. Victor Spectre is a veritable paragon of civil virtue,” the mayor had written. “It has been my pleasure to frequently entertain him in my official residence. He is the champion of many charitable causes, makes an annual donation to a boy’s home for waterfront waifs that is, to say the least, stupendous in size. Without him, our fair city would be much, much the poorer.”

So, Smoke concluded at once, he would have to go after Spectre in a very different way than that with which he was accustomed. It would require that he make somewhat of a splash himself, so he continued planning. And it would be necessary to leave his beloved High Lonesome. Sally found out about his plan when she discovered him inspecting his dress clothes and several suits he had purchased over the years.

“Where are we going, dear?” she asked, hopeful he would say they would go back to visit her parents.

“Not ‘we,’ dear. I have to make a business trip to St. Louis.”

Her entire adult life spent with Smoke Jensen, Sally had long ago learned how to skillfully hide her disappointment. She employed that talent now. “Cattle? Or horses?”

The Sugarloaf had only recently begun the process of changing over from a cattle ranch to a horse farm. Smoke had acquired a herd of twenty-five top quality brood mares and several stallions of impeccable lineage. Now, this conversion gave Smoke a moment of worry that his ploy had created more problems than it had solved. He had to think fast.

“Cattle. I think it is time we sold out the entire herd and I decided to try for the highest market, at a packing house that sells south, directly to New Orleans.”

“And they are in St. Louis. Yes, it sounds good. I was beginning to think we would never be free of those stupid, woolly-faced creatures. Go with my blessing. Though…I would like the opportunity to browse the fashionable shops in St. Louis. They have the latest styles from New York and Paris.”

Smoke made a face and responded with mock irritation. “If you did that, we would need to have ten, rather than a thousand head. I’ll miss you.”

“And I, you.” Sally smiled and patted his check. “When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Be careful. Don’t get yourself hurt.”

“Oh, I will. I’ve nothing to worry about in such a
civilized
place.” Only Smoke Jensen did not believe that for a moment.

Through a banker affiliated with Sally Jensen’s father, Smoke Jensen found the doors to the salons of high society open to him throughout St. Louis. He got his first look at Victor Spectre on his third nightly outing with the cream of the social whirl. It was a benefit dinner—at $50 a plate—for the campaign chests of several state politicians.

After the dessert—
crepes à la flambé
—which Smoke found overly sweet and lacking in substance, like the long-winded speeches that followed, Victor Spectre made a lavish presentation of a large check to the party’s candidate for Governor. He was rewarded by abundant applause and flattering words. Smoke Jensen took an immediate dislike to Victor Spectre. Even if he had not known of Spectre’s secret life, it would have been the same. Oily men, with too much money, which they used to buy politicians, rubbed his hair the wrong way. Wisely, he avoided direct contact with the criminal mastermind. That would come later.

Smoke Jensen spent a day at a saloon across the street from the hotel where Victor Spectre lived and conducted his clandestine business. Saloons seemed never to close in St. Louis, there being only an hour or two respite when the swampers could clean the establishments and restock the bars. It made frontier drinking parlors seem downright tame. Reputed for their wildness, most closed their doors by midnight. Seated at a table by a front window, Smoke made mental note of those entering and leaving the hotel, who had the furtive “outlaw” look about them. If asked to put that description into words, Smoke would have been hard pressed to do so. It was more a feel, a sixth sense sort of thing, acquired over years of being around the breed. Any good lawman had it.

One peace officer, who was rapidly building a reputation for himself, Billy Tilghman, put it an interesting way. “You can dress a pig in a silk suit, but you still know it’s a pig.”

To his surprise, among those visiting the hotel, and presumably Victor Spectre, Smoke Jensen recognized the faces of three men. He had last seen their likenesses on wanted posters in the office of Monty Carson. The first came shortly before noon. He had been accompanied by a short, ferret-faced man with oiled, slicked-back hair and equally shiny patent leather shoes. He smelled of lawyer to Smoke. The other two came together, late in the afternoon, after the clang, hiss, and chug of a slowing locomotive had announced the arrival of the East-bound local at the depot two blocks away.

The trio must represent the brains of Spectre’s operation in Colorado, Smoke surmised, since the first man and his slimy companion had not left as yet. At least not from the front door. Smoke would have given anything to be able to overhear their conversation. Not given to flights of fancy, he dismissed all such longing and ordered another beer. It would be his sixth for the afternoon. And he had consumed a lot of coffee during the morning hours. He was in dire need of a visit to the chiksale, only he did not want to give up his vigil until the three wanted men reappeared.

His bladder had reached the aching point by the time that was accomplished. They came out together, along with the unctuous attorney, who spoke to them animatedly, gesturing emphatically with both hands. Smoke had settled his tab a short while before. Now he watched them out of sight around the corner, then hurried out into the street and followed. First to break off was the lawyer. He entered the tiled lobby of a run-down office building, its facade grimed by coal smoke and dust. Smoke made a note of the address and continued after the three hard cases.

They led him to a tall, narrow building, sandwiched between two huge brick warehouses on the riverfront. Piers extended out into the vastness of the mighty Mississippi. The area smelled of damp mud, rotting vegetation, and fish. Smoke gave them a few minutes before entering himself. In the time he waited, his sensitive sense of smell uncovered cooking odors as well. When he passed through the doorway into a large public room, he saw the reason why.

Expensively decorated with rich wall-hangings, lighted by crystal chandeliers that depended from a high, arched ceiling at the second-floor level, the establishment turned out to be an elaborate restaurant. Two tiers of balcony ran completely around the room, a mezzanine, and the second-floor level. A huge, horseshoe-shaped bar occupied the center of the ground floor. Thick waves of tobacco smoke, raucous chatter, and laughter rose up the walls all around. Not until he crossed an arched, oriental-style bridge did Smoke Jensen realize that the first floor had been offset and the cellar had been given over for a ruder trade. Barge-men and tugboat crews more than likely, he suspected.

White tablecloths, linen napkins, and real silver decorated the intimate settings for two, four, or six. Each table also held a crystal vase with a single red rose. Apparently Victor Spectre must be as generous with his underlings as he was in his show of being a social lion, Smoke mused. That, or these fellows were skimming off some of the cream. He spotted the men he had followed and gave the head waiter a generous tip to be seated at a table close by. On impulse, Smoke ordered a Sazarac cocktail and then headed for the men’s room.

Inside plumbing was still a novelty west of the Mississippi, even in this large city nestled on its banks. Several male patrons, out of sight of their contemporaries in the brightly lighted facility, remarked to one another on the oddity of relieving themselves inside a building.
Idiots
, Smoke thought with a flash of contempt.
Don’t they know an outhouse is a
building? Back at his table, Smoke Jensen concentrated on attuning his ear to the conversation of the three outlaw leaders.

“So now it’s an Army payroll,” one declared. “I’m not so sure I like the risk.”

“Not just a
payroll,
Gage. It’s
the payroll
for Fort Leavenworth, Fort Riley, Hays, and Fort Dodge. Victor says it will come to more than three hundred thousand dollars, what with two months’ back-pay thrown in.”

Ice slid down the spine of Smoke Jensen. If Victor Spectre got his hands on that much money he would have the power to be untouchable. When a hundred dollars could buy a favorable decision from certain circuit judges, think what ten thousand could produce with even a federal district judge. He had to stop this train robbery, for that was what it surely would be, and bring down Victor Spectre before the payroll was taken by the gang. To do that he first had to learn more. That required that he listen to more of their conversation and endure a meal. To walk out now would raise suspicions.

Smoke ordered the standing rib roast, with creamed new potatoes and peas, and asparagus, while the one called Gage talked about telegraphing to bring in the number of guns they would need for the job. Then he expressed concern about the Army and the Pinkertons knowing who had pulled the robbery.

“No, not as long as we do like Victor said. Have some of the men call you Jesse and me Frank. It’ll be blamed on the James-Younger gang.”

When his food came, the roast carved at the table, it was the most attractive and succulent Smoke Jensen had ever experienced. The meat was dark pink in the middle, the outer edge a crusty brown, and surprisingly tender. The asparagus could also be cut with a fork. The potatoes and peas so sweet as to make one think they had come from a home kitchen garden. Smoke hardly tasted a bite. It appeared the outlaw trio intended to make a night of it here, so Smoke ate as quickly as possible without attracting attention, paid his bill—a little steep, he thought, at ten dollars—and departed unnoticed.

He knew where he could get the fine details of this robbery. Firmly fixed in his mind was the face of the smooth shyster with the greasy hair.

Railford Blumquist had offices on the third floor of the building Smoke Jensen had noted before. When Smoke arrived, he found to his good fortune that a light burned behind the windows which had gold leaf letters, outlined in black, that spelled out: ATTORNEY AT LAW. He entered and took the flight of stairs to the second floor two at a time. They creaked terribly, so he slowed and climbed the second ascent close to the wall to avoid unwanted noise.

Outside the door to Blumquist’s office, Smoke prepared himself and then reached for the knob. His hand had not closed on it when it turned suddenly and the portal flew open. Smoke found himself face-to-face with Railford Blumquist.

Smoke recovered first. “Lawyer Blumquist, I presume.” He stepped forward, forcing Blumquist to retreat into his office.

“Why, yes, yes, I am.” The attorney frowned and looked upward at his unexpected caller. “May I ask what you wish? It’s hardly business hours.”

“I came for some information.”

Blumquist screwed his mouth into a moue of disapproval. “Why don’t you try the library? Tomorrow. When it’s open. Now, I must go. I’m entirely too long overdue for a dinner party at my home.”

Smoke took another menacing step, which compelled Blumquist to backpedal or lose balance. “Dinner will have to wait. I’m here about Victor Spectre and three lowlife scum wanted for a variety of crimes in Colorado.”

For a second, Blumquist blanched, but covered it nicely. Face blank, eyes flat brown mirrors, he spoke with courtroom primness. “I do not know who you are talking about.”

“Yes, you do. You and one of the outlaws paid a visit today on Victor Spectre at the hotel where he lives. And you left with all three.”

Although swiftly plunged into a state bordering on terror, Blumquist continued to rely on bluster. “You’ve been following me. I’ll have you arrested for that.”

“I think not.” Smoke’s words had the consistency of iron. “Come on, Blumquist, you’re an officer of the court and so am I. Only I happen to be a Deputy United States Marshal, investigating a crime that is about to be committed. A federal crime. And I have reason to believe you know the fine details of that crime. If you expect to get out of this with your life, if not your license, intact, you had better tell me all about it.”

Although frightened, Railford Blumquist still managed to examine his persecutor with cold contempt. “You’re nothing, Marshal. A badge with legs. And, like most lawmen, poor as a church mouse, I’m sure. Victor Spectre will crush you like a bug under foot.”

“Then you admit knowing him?” Smoke probed.

“Let’s say I know…of him. Come now, Marshal. Every man has his price. I’m sure I could contact Mr. Spectre and arrange for yours to be paid to you for forgetting all about this unfortunate situation.” Smoke Jensen held up his left hand, fingers spread. Blumquist seized upon it. “Five hundred, is it?” He considered Smoke’s silence. “Five thousand? Not even a drain on Spectre’s petty cash.”

Smoke produced a nasty smile. “No. Five knuckles,” he declared before he closed the fingers into a fist and hit Blumquist flush in the mouth.

Slammed backward, Railford Blumquist backpedaled until he slammed into the desk of his absent law clerk. The edge bit painfully into the small of his back. Smoke Jensen followed him up. Hard blows smashed into his chest and stomach. Agony radiated out to Railford’s fingertips and toes. His head swam. Pain had always terrified him. As a child he had shrunk from the usual schoolyard and street conflicts. He lived every moment looking over his shoulder, expecting an attack.

He howled as he found himself picked off the floor and hurled through the air. His back made tormenting contact with the wall behind him.

The punishing blows began again. Tears sprang hot and stinging in his eyes. His lips mashed under the brutal knuckles and the pent-up water spilled from under closed lids. Once more Smoke picked up Railford and slammed him off a wall. Fighting for a modicum of control, the lawyer raised his hands in a pleading gesture.

“No. Please, no more. Don’t hit me anymore.”

Smoke stopped, hovered over the cringing, sorry excuse for a man. “Tell me about the payroll robbery. Every detail.”

Half an hour later, Smoke Jensen had every last bit of information Railford Blumquist possessed. He knew where and when. He also knew where the loot was to be taken, and that Victor Spectre and his son, Trenton, would be there to receive it. All he had left to do was take Blumquist to jail, get to Jefferson Barracks, let the Army know about the robbery, and take care of the Spectres himself.

Victor and Trenton Spectre waited in the large, low barn on the abandoned farm where they were to meet the eight-man escort for the wagon-loads of gold and silver coin and bales of greenback currency that would soon arrive. They had no way of knowing that the train they expected the gang to loot bristled with guns. The stock cars did not haul cattle, hogs, and sheep to Kansas City to the slaughterhouses. Rather, they held twenty saddled horses each and a troop of cavalry.

Added to that, all of the men and some of the “women” in the parlor cars and Pullmans behind were Pinkerton agents. Victor Spectre’s plan called for half of the gang to board at various stations across Missouri and at the right spot, take control of the locomotive and force the engineer to stop where the remainder waited with blasting powder to open the express cars and wagons to haul off the money.

Doomed to failure by the quick action of Smoke Jensen, the raid would end in bloody slaughter for the outlaws. In anticipation of that, Smoke moved in on the anxiously expectant father and son. He approached the barn from behind, careful not to reveal his presence. When he reached his goal, he worked his way silently along one side, his ears tuned to the low conversation from inside.

“Father,” an adenoidal voice of a youth spoke as Smoke ducked to avoid a window. “This is more money than any other of our enterprises has yielded.”

“Yes. It will be more than enough to purchase a large, steam-screw vessel.” Victor Spectre laughed lightly, his voice warm with self-pride. “The owner’s stateroom will be quite lavish, I promise you. You will travel in it, to oversee our enterprises in Mexico. It is a turbulent land, I grant you. And I sometimes succumb to a father’s weakness. I worry about you going there alone.”

“I won’t be alone, Father. I have engaged the services of ten good men. True, they are young and filled with the prospect of adventure. But they are fast, and good with their guns. But I’m faster and the best. Besides, you’re sending along five of your most trusted underlings.”

“The Mexican bandits can come at you with more than a hundred men, Trenton.”

“Not to worry, Father. Not with that Gatling gun.” Trenton paused and frowned a moment. “We should have had more money for this expansion. What are you going to do to recover our losses in Colorado?”

Righteous anger clouded the face of Victor Spectre. “Try again. Perhaps in New Mexico or Nebraska. Even Kansas. I hear the sod-busters there have banks fat and ripe for the plucking. What burns deep inside me is that our setbacks in Colorado are the doing of but a single man. I find that hard to believe, but all of the evidence and the accounts of the survivors agree.”

“Who is that, Father?”

“That goddamned Smoke Jensen. May his soul rot in the vilest pit of hell.”

Suddenly the smaller door, inset in the tall, wide portals of the barn, flew open and a man stood framed by the jamb. He wore a fringed buckskin shirt, with trousers and moccasins of the same material. Slung low on his right hip, the butt of a Colt Peacemaker protruded from its holster. High on his left, canted at an angle, the butt of a second revolver showed in another scabbard.

“I believe someone has just used my name in vain.”

Choked with rage, Victor Spectre could barely form words. “You—you’re Smoke Jensen?”

“Well, I’m not God.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to arrest the both of you. Your gang is being taken care of by the Army and the Pinkertons.”

Victor Spectre sputtered and his face turned scarlet. “Goddamn you to hell, Smoke Jensen.” So saying, Victor went for his gun. Likewise, so did his son.

Trenton Spectre proved that more lay behind his words than teenage braggadoccio. He was fast and he was good. He had the muzzle of his weapon clear of leather before Smoke Jensen even reached for his righthand Colt. The .44 in Trenton’s hand began an upward arc when Smoke drew with blinding, precise speed. Smoke had accurately judged that the boy would be quicker and surer than his father. The hammer fell on Smoke’s .45 Peacemaker an instant before Trenton lined up the barrel of his six-gun.

A bullet from Smoke’s revolver punched a hole two fingers’ width below Trenton’s rib cage. It staggered the stout, broad-shouldered boy and threw his shot off. The slug sent up a shower of fine bits of straw and dust from the dirt floor of the barn halfway between himself and Smoke Jensen. Smoke pivoted to confront Victor.

Slowed by age, and hampered by the long cut of his suit coat, Victor Spectre had barely freed his Smith American from its shoulder holster when Smoke Jensen fired at him. Enormous pain erupted in the right side of Victor’s chest and he dropped to his knees. The revolver fell from his grasp and thudded on the hard-packed ground. Smoke had no time to waste on him.

Youth totaled the balance in the unended contest between Smoke Jensen and Trenton Spectre. Trenton managed to maintain his grip on his .44 Colt and brought it up while Smoke fired at the boy’s father. Now he blinked rapidly in an effort to fight off his blurred vision and raised the long barrel of the Frontier Model Colt. Beyond the blade front sight, the figure of Smoke Jensen jumped in and out of focus. Frantically he tried with a sweat-slicked thumb to draw back the hammer. He saw a flash of yellow orange and felt a terrible impact in his heart.

Then Trenton Spectre felt nothing at all. Dead before he hit the floor of the barn, Trenton Spectre still held tightly onto his six-gun. A scream of paternal anguish tore out of Victor Spectre’s throat. He grabbed wildly at his .44 Smith and launched himself at Smoke Jensen.

“You bastard!” he howled.

Smoke fired hastily. His slug cut a deep trough along the head of Victor Spectre from temple to rear lobe along the left side. The wound released a halo of blood drops and knocked the criminal mastermind unconscious. Still charged for battle, Smoke Jensen had to force himself to hesitate and take stock. In an eyeblink he realized that the fight had ended.

A month went by before Victor Spectre could be brought to trial. Smoke Jensen attended, much put out at having to leave the High Lonesome to attend court in St. Louis. The first thing he noticed when the bailiffs brought Victor Spectre to the defense table was the ugly wound he had given the man. It had healed into a mass of scar tissue, from which sprouted short, totally white hairs that contrasted with the black of the remainder like the pattern on the pelt of a skunk. Fitting, Smoke had thought at the time….

That had been nearly seven years ago. Now, Smoke Jensen had to allow that instead of preparing himself for a new, reformed life, Victor Spectre had spent his years in prison honing a sharper hatred and desire for revenge. Something, Smoke knew, would have to be done about it, and soon.

With dawn still a silver-gray promise on the horizon, Smoke Jensen broke camp the next morning. He had packed away everything and had only a skillet, coffee pot, trestle, and iron tripod to cool and stow in a parfleche before swinging into the saddle. He aimed Thunder’s nose into the northwest and advanced into the tall, barely undulating, green sea that covered the Great Divide Basin.

Without any wind to fight, particularly a sharp one out of the northwest, Smoke made good headway. He had his first destination firmly in mind: the Arapaho and Shoshoni encampments of the Wind River Reservation, near Riverton, on the Bighorn River. He had only the ramparts of the Green Mountains, now a low, dark line that protruded above the curvature of the earth, between himself and his old friends among the Arapaho and Shoshoni. Smoke had a notion, reinforced by his recollection of the determination and implacable evil of Spectre, Tinsdale, and Buckner, that he might have need to call upon his Indian friends sometime in the near future.

For the time being, though, he remained content to let the horses eat the miles and leave him to his thoughts. Not for an instant had he harbored any regrets for killing Trenton Spectre. The boy was just shy of eighteen, and corrupt enough to be ripe for harvest by the Grim Reaper. It troubled him far more that he had not finished off Victor Spectre. Although justice remained swift and sure in most cases, three men he had spared had cheated the hangman and now required retribution from himself. Too much money, all of it ill-gotten, had bought a special kind of justice for them. A small thing perhaps, though another chink in the armor of the rule of law.
Stop it,
Smoke admonished himself. Such hankie-twisting philosophizing was a mental crutch for the weak and the cowardly.

He didn’t lack for money or the things it would buy. Only a hypocrite would criticize and condemn the wealthy while he, himself, was rich. Provided, of course, his mind mocked him, it was money honestly earned. He quickly dismissed the conundrum a moment later when he saw the figures of three mounted men across his path.

“Howdy, a feller don’t see many people out this way,” the one in the middle remarked when Smoke Jensen had ridden up.

Smoke gave his reins a turn around the saddlehorn and tipped up the brim of his Stetson left-handed. “Now, that’s a fact. You gents headed for Colorado?”

A thick, walrus mustache twitched in a mirthless smile. “Actually, it’s Nebraska. Not to pry, mister, but where might you be directed?”

Smoke took notice of the way the trio eyed his ’Palouse stallion, expensive saddle, and the heavy-laden Debbie, his packhorse. “Thought I might set a spell in Riverton.”

The talkative one shook his head regretfully. “That’s a sort of unwelcoming place. Bein’ all that close to an Injun reservation makes folks a mite edgy.”