Fury of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “Old friend, I think that we should stay in these mountains a while, avoid places where Carvajal might have support. If we manage to confuse them, if they lose the trail, we will regain the initiative and strike where they least expect.”

  Carbone nodded thoughtfully. “Of course, amigo. You have the right of it. I fear I am out of practice at thinking deviously.”

  He’s still man enough to admit it, Smoke thought with satisfaction. “Where had you intended for us to go?” he asked.

  “Directly to my estancia,” Carbone responded.

  “Um. What say we take the next small trail leading off the main road?”

  Carbone considered it a moment. “We would end up in the small town of Pueblo de la Paz. It is a mining town, like many around here.”

  “Under Carvajal’s control?” Smoke asked.

  “Not openly, at least. There are some stories I’ve heard. For some reason, Carvajal has so far left the town alone.”

  “Then that’s where we shall go, friend,” Smoke decided.

  Luminoso Soto sat in the chair in front of a roll-top desk. He laced pudgy fingers over a swell of belly that would have done justice to a hot air balloon. His small, close-set pig eyes glittered with avarice as he listened to the man in front of him.

  Making that report was his partner in the small silver mine above the town of Pueblo de la Paz, Gaston Moro, the Jefe de Policia—Chief of Police, who concluded, “You realize what this means, Luminoso. We must have more men at once. This new vein is rich and thick,” he spread his hands some two feet apart. “It is nearly pure silver. One can almost gouge it out with a spoon.”

  “I have no desire to eat the stuff, compadre. I don’t even like it for itself.” Thick lips pursed in sympathy to thoughts of mounds of rich food, barrels of prize-winning port wine, bushels of salted sardines. “It’s what you can exchange it for that excites pleasure in my heart.”

  In contrast to his partner, Gaston Moro had remained whippet-thin, with the lean lines of a swift hunter. He continually despaired of Soto’s preoccupation with food and drink. Where Luminoso lived to eat, he, Gaton, ate, and sparingly at that, only to keep alive. “Listen, primo,” he urged on his cousin and godfather of his children, “this is serious. If we cannot obtain men from outside, we will have to begin using the villagers.”

  “No!” Luminoso exploded. His fat hand slapped down on the desk top. “We would be hanged from the belfry of the church if we tried that. So far the people have tolerated our—ah—unusual methods and prospered along with us. We must not turn on them now.”

  Moro shrugged expansively. “So be it, then. I leave it up to you to recruit new workers for the mine.”

  “Never fear, Gaston, there will be an adequate work force when it becomes necessary to tap this new vein. Meanwhile, what have you done about Alfonso Lares?”

  Moro worked up an expression of distaste. “The cantinero with ambitions of joining our partnership? Well, in light of your opposition to dealing harshly with the locals, I’m not sure what can be done. If you want my opinion, I suggest that we need to arrange for him a little accident. A fatal one.”

  After closing time at the Cantina La Merced, bartender Alfonso Lares washed glasses and stacked them, while his young son, Carlos, swept the floor and sluiced out the urinal trough in front of the bar. Then they helped themselves to fiery bowls of leftover caldo de camerón, a mixture of tiny shrimp, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and chili peppers. This night, something must have happened to put off the shrimp broth made by old Señora Hurtado.

  Alfonso’s belly cramped as he and the boy made their way home. Could the shrimp have been bad? Some said the Hurtado woman was a witch. Bruja or not, something had certainly put a curse on that batch. New waves of pain, like thin glass spears piercing his stomach, washed over Alfonso. He jerked out of his own misery at a cry from his son.

  The boy lay on the dirt of the street, curled into a ball, his small hands clutching his stomach. “Popi, Popi, my stomach hurts. I—I—” His eyes squeezed shut and tears ran down 10-year-old cheeks. He gave a convulsive heave and vomited explosively. Alfonso went to one knee and wretched also. Then a velvet club of blackness bashed his senses from his head, and he fell in his own spew.

  He awakened in jail. His head throbbed, his mouth dry as sand. “Por dios, what am I doing here?” he demanded in a croaky voice.

  “You ought to know,” a smirking jailer responded as he rounded the corner of the box-like cell in Pueblo de la Paz’s municipal hall. “We found you standing over the body of the son you had just murdered.”

  “I? Murder? No, it is not possible,” Alfonso Lares protested in numb disbelief. “I—I did nothing to Carlos.”

  “Come, Lares, you’re guilty as sin, and you know it. Poison. That’s a woman’s weapon,” the jailer added scornfully.

  “The City of Peace,” Smoke Jensen spoke as he and Carbone rode past a small sign at the outskirts of Pueblo de la Paz. “I hope it is as good as its name.”

  “For our sake, yes, let that be so,” Carbone agreed.

  After arranging for the care of their two pack horses and gear, Smoke and Carbone rode to the smallest of the three saloons in town and entered to wash away the dust. Four men, who looked hard and dangerous, sat at a table near a beehive-shaped fireplace. They eyed the strangers with suspicion and hostility.

  “Maybe not so peaceful after all, amigo,” Carbone observed of their watchers.

  “Time will tell,” Smoke replied philosophically. He could taste the hightened tension in the room.

  They ordered beer and it came in tall, slender glasses called tubos. Smoke tried his and found it a bit rushed on the finish, not so green as to be skunky, but short of the standards of American brewers such as Pabst and Anheuser. Like the United States, every town of any consequence in Mexico had its own brewery. Local brands had a fierce partisanship on the part of residents. Carbone used the back of his hand to wipe foam from his pencil-line mustache.

  “Aye, such a dandy,” observed one of the card players. “Why didn’t he just lick it off like a real man?”

  Carbone made to ignore him. Smoke Jensen eased away an arm’s length and unobtrusively slipped the hammer thong free on his .44.

  “Speak up!” the heckler persisted. “I can’t hear you.”

  “So much for the city of peace,” Carbone said with a sigh.

  “He’s all yours,” Smoke offered. “I’ll keep the other three off your back.”

  Carbone pasted a laconic smile on his face and pushed away from the bar. On cat-feet, he padded across the floor to the obnoxious local hardcase. With only the table between them, the taunting pistolero shoved back his chair and came to his boots, big, cruelly sharp spurs ringing. His hand hovered over the pearl grips of his Mendoza .45 Colt copy while his mouth worked up a new insult.

  “You walk like a man with a cob up his …” His words ended when Carbone drove a hard, straight right into his mouth. The knuckles of Carbone’s fist pulped the man’s lips and ground his scraggly mustache into the raw flesh.

  Instantly his companions sprang from their chairs, ready to take on this impudent stranger who had offended the town’s premier bully. From the bar, Smoke Jensen’s voice cracked like a teamster’s whip.

  “Don’t!”

  They looked at him, disbelieving. A gringo and he dares to interfere? They ignored the source of their agitation and charged Smoke as one. Their mistake, as they quickly found out. Smoke’s big, broad shoulders rolled as he kept his fists low, balled and ready. The nearest Mexican overextended in his eagerness to land the first punch. Smoke’s right rocketed up from his waist and planted itself firmly under the ardent combatant’s chin.

  His head snapped backward, and his boots kept coming forward. Smoke Jensen sidestepped him and let his forehead smack into the marble-trimmed bar. He went down soundlessly. A sizzling left blew past Smoke’s ear, and he ducked to reposition himself. The remaining two came at him like a pair of wrestlers.


  The smaller grabbed him around the waist and, making a growling sound like an enraged terrier, jerked and flailed uselessly. Smoke ignored him to better deal with his somewhat brighter friend. He slipped a short right jab, popped two quick lefts under the Mexican’s ribcage.

  Air whizzed out of a surprised mouth a moment before Smoke’s looping right cracked off the hinge of his jaw. Staggered, the local tough’s eyes crossed slightly, and he took a wise step backward. Smoke now gave his full attention to the one who would wear him to the ground. A balled fist, driven downward from shoulder level exploded bright colored lights inside the growling Mexican’s head. His grip loosened and, confronted by a recovered opponent’s charge, Smoke wasted no more time on the small fellow.

  A swift raise of one knee sent him flying. Smoke pivoted to check the other’s advance. Three blows got through, one stinging off Smoke’s cheek, the other two bounced off his heavily muscled chest. He produced a fleeting grin and moved in on his assailant.

  “¡Dios mio! You are a big one,” the local hardcase exclaimed. It didn’t matter, he still had his cuchillo.

  He went for his knife, which proved another mistake. Smoke Jensen had anticipated the move and countered it with the toe of his boot in the tender, vulnerable inner surface of his enemy’s right thigh. Howling, the man went to one knee. He swung the large, sharp Toledo blade in a menacing manner, which kept Smoke at a safe distance. Slowly, uncertainly, he tried to stand.

  “Fight like a man, you pig,” he taunted in a spray of saliva.

  “Aren’t you confused a little?” Smoke provoked back. “Who’s the coward who had to go for a knife?”

  Unaccustomed to having his intended victims talk back, let alone insult him, the knife-artist gaped, his breath rough, words slurred. “¿Que dece?”

  “I said, you are a coward,” Smoke stated simply in his best Spanish.

  “¡Pendjo! Pinche cabrón,” the cutter snarled.

  His knife whirred through the smoky air of the cantina, and Smoke Jensen came right behind its movement. He planted a boot solidly in the man’s armpit while his fists did considerable damage to the exposed face. Steel clattered to the tile floor in a musical ring. Relentless, Smoke Jensen continued to work on the face of his opponent like a morning’s exercise on the light bag. Swift, twisting, one-two, one-two wasp stings that opened a cut over the left eye, then the right cheek. Smoke waded in on the nose then. He felt cartilage give under the pounding of his big, powerful fists.

  Blood gushed in a torrent. Smoke realized his attacker had fallen into unconsciousness a moment before a rain of light blows pounded on his back. Unable to square off for a straight punch, Smoke swung his right arm like the shaft of a flywheel. It made solid contact with the smallest of the three who had jumped him.

  Bug-eyed, the Mexican tough went flying into the bar again. This time his head cracked hard against the top. With his stomach exposed he suffered mightily when Smoke Jensen took advantage of it. Hard knuckles made meaty smacks as Smoke went to work on the unguarded midsection. Grunts turned to whimpers while Smoke wore down hard belly muscles into slack, defenseless pudding. He stopped short of any permanent internal injury. Smoke paused long enough to wipe sweat from his brow, then turned in time to see Esteban Carbone yank on the front of his tormentor’s shirt and drive his head into the solid wooden top of the table. Smiling with immense satisfaction, Carbone strolled toward Smoke.

  “That seems to have settled that,” he quipped.

  Smoke started to agree when a voice that cracked like a pistol shot came from the doorway. “Put up your hands. You are under arrest.”

  Ramon, Julio, Gabriel, and Victor worked as herd boys on the estancia of Don Miguel Antonio Martine y Garcia. Victor, the oldest at nearly 12, and Julio, who had only turned 11 the previous month, thought of themselves as the ones in charge. Ramon and Gabriel, ten years of age, were more inclined to take advantage of the warm autumn sun in the high valley of Aguascalientes to throw off their responsibilities, and their clothes, and leap into one of the many cooling irrigation ditches for a long afternoon’s swim. Fed by the hot water springs from which the state took its name, the boys could bask in these warm waters far earlier and later than lads living on the slopes of the high sierra surrounding this alta plana where grapes, sugar cane and fighting bulls were raised.

  They were so doing on this afternoon, and had coaxed Julio into joining them, when the bad men arrived. Hard-faced, with mean eyes and cruel slashes for mouths, the band of outlaws, dressed all in black, reined in and looked at the boys without any show of emotion.

  “These are the ones?” asked a bandit to the left of the leader.

  “They are as good as any,” the leader answered with a shrug of indifference.

  Suddenly aware of the presence of these threatening strangers, Ramon, Gabriel, and Julio leaped from the bank where they were sunning themselves dry to cover their nakedness in the water. Julio, bolder than the other two, addressed the men stammeringly.

  “Buenos tardes, Señores. Do you work for Don Miguel? Or are you seeking him?”

  Sneering laughter answered him. “We came to see you, boy. Come out of the water,” the leader appraised him.

  “I—I cannot, Señor. I have nothing on,” Julio gulped.

  “Come out,” came the cold demand. “All of you.”

  Wet and crestfallen, certain they would be punished for neglecting their duties, the trio of boys splashed up the bank of the ditch. Suddenly, braided riatas dropped over their shoulders, and they were yanked off their feet. Laughing and shouting jibes, the ugly trio of Carvajal’s bandits put spurs to their horses and began to drag the helpless boys across the rough, cactus-studded ground.

  Needle spines pierced their flesh, and soon they bled from cuts and gouges. Still the bandit trio yelped with delight. Two others set off after Victor, who had observed their act of terror from a distance. He ran as fast as his sandles would carry him. Growing louder over the frightened pounding of his heart he heard the approaching hoof beats.

  “He’s mine!” the leader shouted with glee as he spun a loop and dropped it expertly over the thin shoulders of the terrified lad. The man had been, before joining Carvajal’s army for adventure, a prize-winning vaquero.

  With a deft snap of the rope, he hauled Victor off his feet and prodded his horse to a gallop. He raced past the fallen boy, the large hoofs of his mount close to Victor’s head. When he reached the end of the riata, it snapped the boy around violently and sent him to skidding across the ground.

  Pain became the whole world for Victor. Faintly he could hear the screams of his companions, whose fate he already knew to be as his own. Their small, bare bodies rolled and dragged over the harsh terrain. His own clothes provided some scant protection for Victor, for which he thanked the kind and protecting God. Only why hadn’t God protected them from this? A rock the size of his fist sent a shower of sparks and flash of blackness through Victor’s head and robbed him of questions on theology.

  How long could he endure? One by one the voices of his friends quieted. When silence came at last, save for his own cries of agony and pleas for mercy, Victor knew with certainty that they no longer lived. A great sadness burst his heart. He would be next. They would all die here, and no one would know why. Then, miraculously, the torment ended. Victor slid across the ground until his movement stopped at the left side of his torturer’s horse. The man bent down, and his long, drooping mustache wriggled as he spoke.

  “I have a message for your Patron. Tell him to pay the tribute to El Rey del Norte, and to send the gringo packing for his own country, or more of his people will be hurt. ¡Bastante! Adalante, compañeros,” he concluded, loosed the riata and they rode off, leaving a bleeding, aching Victor behind.

  It took half an hour before Victor could stand, longer still until he could move around. Sobbing his grief, he went from one to the other still, brown form on the sandy soil. To his surprise, he saw movement in Julio’s chest. He still lived. Victor c
rept on hands and knees, dragging Julio with him, to the edge of the canal and slid into the water with his friend. He stripped off the shredded remains of his clothes and washed thoroughly, bathing Julio’s wounds also.

  All the while he planned. He would wear Julio’s shirt and pants back to the estancia. Julio could fit into one of the … dead boys’ trousers at least. He would have to give the Patrón the message. If not, those men would return and kill him, Victor reasoned. Then a cold light came to his eyes, and a hard smile touched his lips.

  Once the Patrón knew, the days of those ladrónes would surely be numbered. For the Patrón had been a mighty pistolero who would make them pay dearly.

  Smoke Jensen looked up as the jailer approached their cell, accompanied by a small, nattily dressed man with a heavy shock of gray hair. He wore a once-white, now age-grayed suit and had a homey face.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he greeted cheerily after the turnkey departed. “I am to be your attorney. Do you have any money with which to pay me?”

  “First off, what are we charged with?” Smoke Jensen asked, making an effort to throttle his temper.

  “Oh, that is simple, Señor. You are charged with drunk and disorderly, assault and battery, and resisting arrest.”

  “¡Mierda!” Carbone barked, his own battle with temper lost. “We were insulted, we were attacked.”

  Fussing with the lapel of his fancy suit, the little lawyer looked Carbone coldly in the eye. “Who threw the first punch?”

  “Ah—er—you have me there, Señor Abogado.”

  “You know his name?” Smoke asked sotto voce.

  “An abogado is an attorney,” Carbone explained.

  “Now then, as to the matter of money?” the attorney made a circular, scrubbing motion with thumb and two fingers, as though feeling coins.

  “We can pay you,” Carbone relented.

  “Fine then. Your case would be best served if you plead guilty,” he said briskly.

  “Now, just a minute,” Carbone protested.

  “Tell us something first. About the man who will be prosecuting us. Are you as good as he?” Smoke prodded.