Having faced death many times before, Smoke was convinced that he had come to an accommodation with it. But he was about to be hanged for something he did not do, and there was something about that prospect that bothered him even more than the actual dying. It wasn’t just that he was going to be executed, though that was bad enough. It was that those who actually were guilty were getting away with it.
Smoke folded his letter and put it in the envelope Turnball had given him. He had just finished addressing it when Deputy Pike stepped up to the cell and looked in.
“Who’d you write that letter to?” Pike asked.
“I wrote it to my wife.”
“Your wife, huh?” Pike said. He giggled. “Is your wife a good-lookin’ woman? I mean, bein’ as she’s goin’ to be a widder-woman, why, just maybe I’ll go meet her.”
“Why don’t you do that?” Smoke said.
“Hah! You want me to go meet your widder?”
“Yes,” Smoke said. “Tell her how much you enjoyed watching me die.” Smoke smiled, a cold, hard smile. “Then I suggest you duck.”
“Why? Is she goin’ to hit me with a fryin’ pan?”
“No. She is more likely to shoot you with a forty-four,” Smoke said.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Well, we’ll just see about that.” Pike stuck his hand in through the bars of the cell. “If you’ll give me your letter, I’ll see to it that it gets mailed.”
“No, thanks.”
“What do you mean no, thanks? Don’t you want it mailed?”
“Not unless I’m dead.”
“Well, don’t you be worryin’ none about that. You’re goin’ to be dead by a little after ten o’clock tomorrow mornin’.”
“You can mail it then,” Smoke said.
“Pike, get away from that cell and quit bothering the prisoner,” Turnball called from his own desk.
“I was just . . .” Pike started.
“I don’t care what you was just,” Turnball said. “Just get away from the cell like I told you to.”
“All right, Marshal, whatever you say,” Pike replied.
That night, Deputy Pike was on duty. As it grew dark, he lit a kerosene lantern, but the little bubble of golden light that the lantern emitted barely managed to light the office. Although the cell was contiguous to the office, very little of the light from the lantern reached it. The cell, while not totally dark, was in deep shadows.
Just as the clock struck ten, Pike came over to the cell. Smoke was lying on the bunk with his hands laced beside his head. Because Pike was backlit by the lantern, Smoke could see him quite clearly. However, the dark shadows inside the cell made it more difficult for Pike to see Smoke.
“Hey, Jensen,” Pike called. “Jensen, you awake in there?”
“I’m awake,” Smoke replied, his low, rumbling voice floating back from the shadows.
“It’s ten o’clock,” Pike said. He giggled. “You know what that means, don’t you? That means you only got twelve hours left to live.”
Pike put his fist alongside his neck, representing a hangman’s noose. Then he jerked his fist, tipped his head over to one side, and made a gagging sound in his throat.
“Shhhiiick!”
Laughing, Pike walked back into the office.
He came back at eleven. “Eleven hours,” he said.
“Thanks so much for reminding me,” Smoke said sarcastically.
“Oh, don’t you worry none about that,” Pike said. “I plan to come here ever’ hour on the hour all night long. What’s the good of hangin’ somebody if you can’t have a little fun with it?”
True to his word, Pike came back at midnight, and again at one. And each time, he told Smoke the time left with particular glee.
As it so happened, Smoke had a good view of the clock from his cell, so, just before two o’clock in the morning, he climbed up to the very top of the cell and hung on with feet and hands. As he expected, Deputy Pike came to the cell just as the clock was striking two. But because Smoke was in the shadows at the top of the cell, Pike didn’t see him.
“Jensen?” Pike called. “Jensen, where are you?”
Smoke was in an awkward and uncomfortable position, and he didn’t know how much longer he would be able to hold on. He watched Pike’s face as the deputy studied the inside of the cell, and he could tell that Pike was both worried and confused.
“Where are you?” Pike asked again. “Where the hell did you go?”
Pike hurried back to get the key; then he returned and opened the door to step inside.
Smoke wasn’t sure if he could have held on for another moment, but he managed to hold on until Pike was well inside the cell and clear of the door.
Then Smoke dropped down behind him.
“What the hell?” Pike shouted, turning around quickly to face Smoke. That was as far as he got. Before his brain had time to register what was going on, Smoke took him down with a powerful blow to the chin.
Working quickly, Smoke dragged the deputy over to the bunk. Then he pulled off the deputy’s socks and stuffed them in his mouth to keep him from shouting the alarm after he left.
“Whew,” Smoke said as he pulled the socks off Pike’s smelly feet. “Those socks are pretty strong. Sorry about stuffing these in your mouth like this, Pike, but maybe you should think about washing your feet a little more often.”
Smoke handcuffed the deputy to the bunk so he couldn’t get rid of the socks. Then he closed and locked the door.
By then, Pike was conscious, and he lay on the bunk, glaring at Smoke with hate-filled eyes. He tried to talk, but could barely manage a squeak.
“Deputy Pike, it has been fun,” Smoke said. “We’ll have to do this again sometime.”
Chapter Fourteen
Smoke retrieved his guns and saddlebags from the office. Then, almost as an afterthought, he took the red and black plaid shirt that had played such a role in his trial. After that, he let himself outside. The cool night breeze felt exceptionally refreshing to him, especially after several days of being cooped up in a cell.
As he stepped out into the street, he saw in actuality what he had only seen in shadow before now. The gallows was rather substantial, consisting of thirteen steps leading up to a platform that was about ten by ten. He didn’t go up the steps for a closer examination, but he knew there would be a trapdoor at the center of the platform. Gabled over the top of the platform was the gibbet, and hanging from the gibbet was the rope and noose.
There was a sign in front of the gallows:
TO BE HUNG
AT TEN O’CLOCK OF THE MORNING
ON THE 15TH INSTANT
FOR THE MURDER OF ROBERT CLARK
KIRBY JENSEN
PUBLIC INVITED.
Taking out the pencil he had used to write his unsent letter to Sally, Smoke drew a large X across the sign. Then at the bottom he added:
HANGING CANCELLED
Chuckling to himself, Smoke hurried down to the livery stable. Although the night was moon-bright, it was very dark inside the stable where his horse was being kept.
He knew that Stormy was in here because he overheard Turnball telling someone that the town of Etna was going to sell Smoke’s horse in order to pay for the expense of his trial and hanging.
As he moved down through the center corridor of the stable, he could smell straw and oats, as well as the manure, urine, and flesh of a dozen or more horses. The animals were being kept in stalls on either side of the center passage, but in the darkness of the building they were little more than large, looming, indecipherable shadows and shapes to him. He would have to depend upon Stormy to help him.
“Stormy?” Smoke called quietly. “Stormy, are you in here?”
Smoke heard a horse whicker in response, and going toward the sound, he found his horse with his head sticking out over the door of the stall.
“Good boy,” Smoke said, rubbing his horse behind its ears. “Did you miss me?”
In response, Stormy nudged his nose against Smoke.
Smoke saw that his saddle was draped over the side of the stall. With a silent prayer of thanks for it being so convenient to him, he picked up the saddle and put it on his horse. Then, very quietly, he opened all the other stall doors in the stable and, clucking at the horses, called them out. Mounting Stormy, he then rode around to the corral and opened the gate. Within moments he had gathered a small herd of some thirty horses, and he started moving them out of town. He kept the herd going until he was at least two miles away. Then he pulled his pistol and fired into the air, causing the horses to break into a gallop.
The lead stallion started running in a direction that would take the herd farther away from Etna, and the others followed instinctively. Smoke was certain that after they tired of running, the herd would dissipate and the horses would probably return, one at a time, to the corral.
But for now they were in a panic, following the leader, and he knew it would be at least one day, maybe more, before the horses got back. He was certain that this wasn’t every horse in town, but it represented a sizable number of them, enough to make the immediate raising of a posse difficult.
Once Smoke escaped from jail, he knew better than to go back home to Sugarloaf, or to even try to get in touch with Sally. There was no doubt in his mind but that Turnball would have notified Sheriff Carson back in Big Rock. And while Smoke and Carson were close friends, Carson was a man of great integrity, and Smoke’s presence there under these circumstances would be very difficult for him.
The only way Smoke could avoid going back to jail, and keeping a date with the hangman, would be to find the real bank robbers and murderers. And it was that, his determination to find the real outlaws and clear his own name, that drove him now.
Tracking six riders on a trail that was a week old would be a task so daunting for most men that they would never even think to try. But Smoke wasn’t most men, and he never gave the task before him a second thought. He had learned his tracking skills from a master tutor. The classes began during his days of living in the mountains with the man called Preacher,
“He’s a good one to learn from,” another mountain man once said to Smoke, speaking of Preacher. “Most anyone can track a fresh trail, but Preacher can follow a trail that is a month old. In fact, I’ve heard some folks say that he can track a fish through water, or a bird through the sky. And I ain’t one to dispute ’em.”
Now, as Smoke started on the trail of the bank robbers, the words of his tutor came back to him.
“Half of tracking is in knowin’ where to look,” Preacher told the young Smoke. “The other half is looking.
“Reading prints on a dirt road is easy. But if you know what you are doing, you can follow the trail no matter where it leads. Use every sense God gave you,” Preacher explained. “Listen, look, touch, smell. Taste if you have to.”
Smoke never was as good as Preacher, but if truth be told, he was second only to Preacher, and he could follow a cold trail better than just about anyone. Returning to the place where he had encountered the bank robbers, he managed to pick up their trail.
It was difficult, the trail being as old as it was, but he was helped by the fact that the robbers were trying to stay out of sight. Because of that, they avoided the main roads, and that made their trail stand out. The funny thing is, if they had stayed on the main roads, Smoke might not have been able to find them because their tracks would have been covered over, or so mixed in with the other travelers that he wouldn’t be able to tell which was which.
But cutting a trail across fresh country the way they did led Smoke just as straight as if they had left him a map. Also, since they were isolated from the other traffic, Smoke was able to study each individual set of hoofprints. To the casual observer, all the prints would look alike, just the U shape of the horseshoes. But a closer examination showed that each set had its own peculiar identifying traits. That would be very helpful to him once they got back onto a major trail, for then he would be able to pick out the individual prints from among many others.
Tracking became even easier once he reached high country because there was still snow on the ground, and it was almost as if they were leaving him road signs.
Then, just on the other side of a large patch of snow, the riders went their separate ways. When that happened, Smoke had to choose which trail he was going to follow.
“What the hell?” Marshal Turnball said when he came into his office the next morning and found Deputy Pike gagged and handcuffed to the bunk and locked in the cell.
“Uhhnnn, uhhhnn,” Pike grunted. He was unable to speak because of the socks that were stuffed in his mouth.
“Oh, shut up your moaning,” Turnball said, his irritation showing in his voice. “Where are the damn keys?”
“Uhnnn, uhnnn,” Pike grunted again.
“Oh, shut up,” Turnball repeated.
Finding the keys lying on his desk, Turnball unlocked the cell door, then pulled the socks from Pike’s mouth.
“Now, Deputy Pike, would you please tell me just what the hell happened?” Turnball asked as he started looking through the key ring for the one that would unlock the handcuffs.
Pike coughed and gagged for a moment after the socks were removed. “The son of a bitch got away!” he finally blurted out.
“I can see that, Pike,” Turnball said. “The question is, how did he get away? When I left last night, he was locked in this cell. Now I come in here this morning and what do I find? Jensen? No! I find you all trussed up like a calf to be branded. Now I want to know how that happened.”
“He jumped me,” Pike said.
“He jumped you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were outside, he was locked in the cell, and he jumped you?”
“I, uh, wasn’t exactly outside the cell when he jumped me.”
“Go on.”
“Well, you see, I come into the cell,” Pike said. He went on to explain how he had looked in the cell and, not seeing the prisoner, went in to investigate. He left out the fact that he had been harassing the prisoner every hour on the hour.
The front door to the jail opened then, and Syl Jones came in. Jones was the owner of the corral.
“Marshal, the horses is gone,” Jones said.
“The horses? What horses?”
“Your horse, my horse, just about ever’ horse in town. They’re all gone.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Gone? Gone where?”
“I don’t know gone where. All I know is, when I come to work this mornin’ the stable door was open, all the stalls was open, and the corral gate was open. They ain’t one horse left.”
“Jensen,” Turnball said angrily.
“Jensen? Are you talkin’ about Smoke Jensen? The fella we’re goin’ to hang this mornin’?” Jones had been a member of the jury that had convicted Smoke.
“Yes, that’s exactly who I mean. The fella we was goin’ to hang this morning,” Turnball said. He looked at Pike, the expression on his face showing his anger. “That is, we was goin’ to hang him before Pike, here, just opened the door and let ’im go.”
“You let ’im go? What the hell did you do that for?” Jones asked.
“Shut up, Jones,” Pike growled. “You think I done it of a purpose?”
“Well, even if he did escape, why would he steal ever’ horse in town?” Jones asked.
“He didn’t steal them, he just ran them off,” Turnball said. “He figured it would keep us from comin’ after ’im.”
“Oh, yeah, I guess that’s right,” Jones said. “Well, if he just run ’em off, like as not they’ll all be back before the day’s out.”
“In the meantime, that gives him a full day’s head start.” Sighing audibly, Turnball ran his hand through his hair. “Damn you, Pike,” he said.
Turnball started for the front door.
“Where you goin’?” Pike asked.
“To the telegraph offic
e. There has to be some way to get a message out.”
“Yes, we’ve got a line through to Omaha,” James Cornett said. “Just got put back up yesterday.”
“Could you send a message to the sheriff of Hinsdale County through Omaha?”
“Well, if they are connected to anyone, I suppose we can. We could go through Omaha to Wichita to Denver to . . .”
Turnball waved his hand. “I don’t need you to build the telegraph line for me, Cornett. Just send the message.”
“All right,” Cornett replied. “What’s the message?”
“I’ll write it out for you,” Turnball said as he began writing. “Actually, two messages, one to the sheriff of Hinsdale County and one to Big Rock, down in Rio Grande County.”
Half an hour later, just after Turnball got through explaining to a disappointed crowd that there would be no hanging today, Cornett came into his office with a message.
“We heard back from the sheriff of Hinsdale County,” Cornett said, handing the message to Turnball.
Turnball read it, then shook his head. “What have we gotten ourselves into?” he asked.
“What is it?” Pike asked.
Without a word, Turnball handed Pike the telegram.
ANY SUCH REWARD POSTER ON KIRBY JENSEN AS MAY EXIST HAS LONG BEEN RESCINDED STOP KIRBY JENSEN IS ONE OF THE LEADING CITIZENS OF THE STATE STOP IT IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY THAT JENSEN WOULD PARTICIPATE IN A BANK ROBBERY STOP EXPECT INVESTIGATION FROM STATE ATTY GENERAL OFFICE STOP GOVERNOR PITKIN PERSONALLY INTERESTED IN CASE STOP
Cody Mitchell, the Western Union operator in Big Rock, Colorado, was sweeping the floor of his office when the instrument began clacking to get his attention. Putting the broom aside, he moved over to the table, sat down, and responded that he was ready to receive.
Betrayal of the Mountain Man Page 12