“Well, now!” another senator puffed up. “We certainly can’t allow that.”
The marshal smiled. “You gonna be the one to tell Jensen that, sir?”
The senator looked as though he wished the chair would swallow him up.
* * *
Smoke released his hold, and the thick springy branch struck its target with several hundred pounds of impacting force. The outlaw was knocked from the saddle, his nose flattened and his jaw busted. He hit the ground and did not move. Smoke led the horse into the timber, took the food packets from the saddle bags, and then stripped saddle and bridle from the animal and turned it loose.
Smoke faded back into the heavy timber at the sounds of approaching horses.
“Good God!” a man’s voice drifted through the brush and timber. “Look at Dewey, would you.”
“What the hell hit him?” another asked. “His en-tar face is smashed in.”
“Where’s his horse?” another asked. “We got to get him to a doctor.”
“Doctor?” yet another questioned. “Hell, there ain’t a doctor within fifty miles of here. See if you can get him awake and find out what happened. Damn, his face is ruint!”
“I bet it was that damn Jensen,” an unshaven and smelly outlaw said. “We get our hands on him, let’s see how long we can keep him alive.”
“Yeah,” another agreed. “We’ll skin him alive.”
Smoke shot the one who favored skinning slap out of the saddle, putting a .44-.40 slug into his chest and twisting him around. The man fell and the frightened horse took off, dragging the dying outlaw along the rocks in the game trail.
“Get into cover!” Horton yelled, just as Smoke fired again.
Horton was turning in the saddle, and the bullet missed him, striking a horse in the head and killing it instantly. The animal dropped, pinning its rider.
“My leg!” the rider screamed. “It’s busted. Oh, God, somebody help me.”
Gooden ran to help his buddy, and Smoke drilled him, the slug smashing into the man’s side and turning him around like a spinning top. Gooden fell on top of the dead horse, and Cates screamed as the added weight shot pain through his shattered leg.
Horton and Max put the spurs to their horses and got the hell out of there, leaving their dead and wounded behind. Smoke slipped back into the timber.
The screaming and calling out for help from Gooden and Cates were soon lost in the ravines and deep timber of the lonesome. Dewey lay on the trail, still unconscious.
Smoke seemed to vanish. But even as he made his way through the thick brush and timber, he knew he had been very lucky so far. He fully understood that there was no way he was going to fight a hundred of the enemy without taking lead at some point of the chase and hunt.
He just didn’t know when.
* * *
Lee and his bunch muscled the dead horse off Cates and to a man grimaced at the sight of his broken and mangled leg.
“We got to set and splint it,” Curly said. “Anybody got any whiskey?”
A bottle was handed to him. Curly gave the bottle to Cates. “Get drunk, Cates. ’Cause this is gonna hurt.”
Cates screamed until he passed out from the pain.
Gooden was not hurt bad, just painfully, the slug passing through and exiting out the fleshy part of his side. Dewey’s face was a torn, mangled mess. He was missing teeth, both eyes were swollen shut and blackened with bruises, and his nose and jaw were shattered.
“We got to get ’em, boss,” Boots said. “Both Jensen and that old coot, Charlie Starr. This is gettin’ personal with me, now. Me and Neal go way back together.”
“What you got in mind? I’m damn shore open to suggestions.”
“I go in after him on foot. Hell, he can hear horses comin’ in from a long ways off. My daddy was a trapper and a hunter up in Northwest Territories. I can Injun with the best of them.”
Lee shook his head. “I like the idea, but two would be better than one. You might get him in a crossfire.”
“I’ll go with him,” Harry Jennings volunteered. “I’d like to skin that damn Jensen alive.”
Both Jennings and Boots were old hands in the timber, and they carried moccasins in their saddlebags. They left behind boots and spurs, took two day’s provisions and struck out, following the very faint trail that almost anyone leaves in the brush: bent-down blades of grass, a broken twig or lower limb from a scrub tree, a heel print in damp earth.
“He ain’t that far ahead of us,” Boots whispered, after having lost the trail at mid-morning and then picking it up a few minutes later. Boots was a thieving, murdering no-account through and through, but he was just about as good a trailsman as Smoke. “Grass hadn’t started springin’ back yet. No talkin’ from now on—he’s close. Real close. Come on.”
Smoke had watched his backtrail. He had felt in the back of his mind that sooner or later somebody would try him on foot. Leaving his pack on the ground in some brush, he climbed a tall tree and began scanning his backtrail with his field glasses. On his second sweep he caught the two men as they skirted a small meadow, staying near the timber.
Smoke backtracked and left a trail, not a too obvious one, for that would be a dead giveaway, but a trail a skilled woodsman would pick up. He had a hunch those two men behind him were very good in the woods, for he hadn’t been leaving much of a trail for anyone to follow.
Back at a narrow point in the game trail, he quickly rigged a swing trap, using a young sapling about as big around as his wrist. The shadowy brush-covered bend in the trail should keep even the most skilled eyes from seeing the piece of dirt-rubbed rawhide he’d placed as the trip.
Smoke carefully backed off about twenty yards and bellied down against the cool earth under some foliage and took a sip of water from his canteen. Tell the truth, he was grateful for the time to rest.
“Pssttt!” he heard the call from one of the men.
He could not yet see them, but they were very near.
Stay on the trail, boys, he silently wished. Just stay on the trail. Do that, and I’ll soon have just one to contend with.
Jennings eased forward, his smile savage as he saw the just crushed foliage on the trail. He touched it; it was very fresh. Smoke Jensen was only minutes ahead of them. Just minutes away from being dead meat, and Jennings and Boots would be thousands of dollars richer.
His left boot stepped over the trip; the right toe of his boot snagged it. Jennings experienced a savage blow in his belly, just below the V of the rib cage. Then the pain hit him. The most hideous pain he had ever experienced in his life. He forced his eyes to look down. He screamed at the sight.
A stake had been rawhided to the sapling. He had tripped a wire or something that had released the booby trap. The stake was now buried in his belly, his blood gushing out.
“Jesus God!” Boots whispered as he crept around the dark trail and saw what Smoke Jensen had done.
“Oh, my Lord!” Jennings wailed. “I cain’t stand the pain. Shoot me, Boots. Shoot me!”
“Yeah,” Smoke’s voice came out of the thick vegetation beside the trail. “Shoot him, Boots.”
“You son of a bitch!” Boots yelled, dropping to his knees on the old trail. “You ain’t no decent human bein’. This ain’t fightin’ fair a-tall.”
Smoke laughed at the protestations of the outlaw/ murderer/rapist. His laughter was taunting.
Jennings’ screaming was a frightful thing to hear. He stood in the center of the game trail, afraid to move, both hands clutching the bloody end of the stake.
Smoke tossed a stick to his right. As soon as the stick hit the ground, Boots’s rifle barked three times, as fast as he could work the lever.
Smoke laughed at his efforts.
Boots cussed Smoke. Called him every ugly and profane and insulting name he could think of, anything to draw the man out where he could get a clear shot at him.
Nothing worked.
“You ain’t got no right to do this!” Boots ye
lled. “This ain’t the way it’s supposed to be.”
“Jesus Christ, Boots,” Jennings moaned. “You got to help me. I cain’t stand no more of this.”
Boots thought hard for a moment. He knew there was nothing he could do for Jennings. He was dying before his eyes. Not even a doctor right now could save him. Blood was dripping from Jennings’ lips; that told Boots the stake had rammed right through the man’s stomach. The point of the stake was sticking out the man’s back.
Jennings died before Boots’ eyes. The man’s legs were spread wide, and both hands held onto the end of the stake. The thick sapling kept him in an upright position.
Boots didn’t know what the hell to do. He knew that Smoke was over yonder, just ahead and to his right . . . at least the last time he’d laughed he was. But the way the man moved, hell, he might be anywhere by now.
Boots got down on his belly and started crawling away from the bloody scene. He was scared; he wasn’t ashamed to admit it. A thrown stick landed just a few inches from his nose, and Boots almost crapped his longhandles.
“Wrong way, Bootsie,” Smoke called.
“Stand up and fight me like a man, goddamn you!” Boots yelled. “Give me a chance.”
“The same kind of chance you gave those little girls you raped and tortured and scalped and killed, Bootsie?”
“I didn’t scalp nobody! That was Dolp what done that. And you done kilt him.”
“I’m going to kill you, too, Bootsie.”
“I surrender!” Boots shouted. “I give up. You got to take me in for a trial. That’s the legal way.”
“I’m a wanted man, Bootsie,” Smoke said with a chuckle. “I’ve got murder warrants out on me. That’s why you boys are chasing me. To collect those thousands of dollars. Now how in the hell can you surrender to me?”
Boots silently cursed. Didn’t do no good to cuss out loud. Jensen wasn’t gonna be rattled by that. Boots knew he was caught between a rock and a hard place. He could shuck his guns and stand up, his hands in the air. But as sure as he done that, Jensen would probably gut-shoot him. He knew how Jensen felt about criminals.
He was a thug and a punk and a lot of other sorry-assed things—he knew that, wasn’t no point in makin’ excuses for what he’d done—but Boots was a realist, too. He knew damn well he was a dead man anyway it went. “I’m a gonna stand up, Jensen,” he called. “My rifle’s on the ground. My gun’s in leather. We’ll fight this out man to man. I’ll ...”
He screamed in fright as a hard hand closed around one ankle and jerked just as he was standing up. Boots hit the ground, belly-down, knocking the breath from him. Something with the strength of a bear flipped him over and tore the gunbelt from his waist. He watched belt and guns go sailing into the woods.
He looked up into the cold brown eyes of Smoke Jensen. God, the man was big.
“Get up,” Smoke told him.
Boots crawled to his moccasins and watched as Smoke smiled at him and lifted his hands, clenching them into big leather-gloved fists. Boots grinned. Bare-knuckle, stomp and kick fighting was something he liked. He might have a chance after all.
“Okay, Jensen. Now you’re playin’ my game. I’m a-gonna stomp you into a greasy puddle.”
Smoke hit him flush in the mouth and knocked him up against the bloody body of Jennings. Boots recoiled in horror and lunged at Smoke, both fists flailing the air.
Smoke hit him a combination left and right that staggered the outlaw and pulped his already split lips. Boots shook his head and tried to clear it. But Smoke pressed him hard, not giving him a chance to do anything except try his best to cover up.
Boots held his fists in front of his face. Smoke hammered at his belly with sledgehammer blows. Boots felt ribs crack and knew that Jensen was going to beat him to death. He tried to run. Smoke grabbed him by his dirty shirt collar and threw him back onto the trail.
“Get up and fight, you yellow bastard,” Smoke told him.
Boots crawled to his feet, wondering if Smoke was going to kick him. That’s what he would have done if it had been Jensen on the ground. He started to raise his fists, and Smoke drove a right through his guard and flattened his nose. Blood and snot flew from his busted snout, and Boots backed up against a tree as his eyes watered and his vision turned misty.
He heard Smoke say, “This is for those little girls back on the trail, Boots. For that poor woman and that man you sorry lumps of shit used for target practice.”
Pain exploded in wild bursts in Boots’ chest and belly and sides as Jensen pounded him unmercifully. Ribs popped and splintered like toothpicks. The last thing Boots would remember for awhile was those terrible cold eyes of Smoke Jensen.
He knew then why people called him the Last Mountain Man.
Chapter Fifteen
Al Martine and his bunch came upon Jennings and Boots in the midafternoon. Several of the outlaws lost their lunch when they found them.
Boots screamed hideously when the outlaws tried to move him.
“Jensen busted all his ribs,” Al said, a coldness touching his guts. “Them ribs is probably splintered into his innards.” He looked down at Boots. “There ain’t nothin’ we can do for you, Boots.”
“Shoot me,” Boots whispered.
Al just looked at him. “We’ll get Jensen for you, Boots. That’s a promise.” Boots whispered something. “I can’t hear you, Boots. What’d you say?”
“Give it up,” Boots said through his pain. “Leave the gang. Leave the mountains. Go to farmin’, or something. If you’re gonna outlaw, git a thousand miles away from Jensen. He’s a devil. Leave him alone.”
“You don’t mean that?” Zack said. “That’s just your pain talkin’.”
“Don’t you want revenge?” Lopez asked.
Boots grinned a bloody curving of the lips. “Hell, boys. That ain’t gonna do me no good. I’m dead.” And he died.
Since none of them had shovels, they wrapped Boots Pierson and Harry Jennings in their blankets and covered them with branches. None of them had a Bible, either. The outlaws just stood around and looked at each other for a time. The gang of young punks rode up just as the last branch was put on the pile.
“Taylor’s dead,” Pecos announced. “Blood poisonin’ kilt him, I reckon.”
“This ain’t workin’ out like we planned, Al,” Crown said. “This was supposed to be an easy hunt. Ever’ day we’re losin’ two, three men to Jensen or Charlie Starr. Another week and there ain’t gonna be none of us left.”
“Yeah,” Lopez said. “And Jensen could be Injunin’ up on us right now.”
All of them quickly found their mounts and hauled out of there. They rode until they came upon Ray’s group and brought them up to date.
“A stake through his belly?” Keno said, his voice filled with horror. He shuddered. “Jesus, man, that ain’t no fair way to fight no fight.”
Concho said, “Jensen ain’t playin’ by no rulebook.”
“Did we ever?” Pedro asked softly in an accented voice. “Unlike the rules set forth in lawbooks and courts of formal law, Jensen is giving us what we have given so many other people over the years. The way I see it, there is only two things we can do: continue the hunt until we kill Jensen or he kills us, or turn tail and run away.”
“I ain’t runnin’ from Jensen,” the young punk Concho said, swelling out his chest. “I think I can take him in a stand-up shoot-out.”
“You are a fool,” Lopez told him bluntly. “I have seen Jensen work. He is smooth, my young friend, and very, very quick. His draw is a blur that the eyes cannot catch.”
“I’m faster,” Concho said.
Lopez shook his head and said no more. Let the young punk find out for himself, he thought. When he challenges Smoke Jensen, he will have a few seconds of life left him to ponder his mistakes as the gunsmoke clears, and he rides to Hell.
“It’ll be dark in a few hours,” Al said, looking up at the sky. “And it’s gonna rain. Let’s get back to the base camp a
nd tell Lee what happened.”
* * *
Smoke sat in his lean-to and drank his coffee and ate his early supper. He felt that outlaws being what they were, he would be reasonably safe from search in the cold, pouring rain. They would be too busy staying dry to look for him.
But he still carefully put out his fire before he rolled up in his blankets and closed his eyes.
* * *
Since Mills and his marshals were going to stay a spell where they were, they made their camp a secure and snug one, using canvas and limbs. The quarters were close together, with a cooking area just in front, easily accessible to all.
“This should bring the killing to a halt for a time,” Mills said, looking out at the driving rain. “Maybe,” he added. “I don’t approve of what Smoke is doing, but I understand why he’s doing it.”
“There is a strange code out here,” Albert said. “One that I’m sure our fathers swore to—at least to some degree.”
“Or swore at,” Sharp said.
“Probably a little of both.” Harold poured a cup of coffee and stared out at the silver-streaked gloom of late afternoon.
“Even after all this is said and done,” Winston said. “We’re still going to have to enforce the law once the warrants you requested on all those outlaws arrive.”
“Yes,” Mills said. “The San Francisco office is supposed to be getting them to Denver by train, then stagecoach to Rio. I requested them to be posted to the local marshal’s office. I’ll ride into town in a few days and check. By that time, I hope all this . . . nonsense concerning Smoke will be over.”
The deputy U.S. Marshals looked at each other. They hoped the same thing. None of them wanted to confront Smoke Jensen with an arrest warrant. None of them knew if they would even try to do that. Aside from the fact that he was the most famous gunslinger in the West, they all genuinely liked the man.
* * *
Most of the miners within a forty-mile radius of the fight had left the mountains and descended on Rio. They didn’t want to be caught up in the middle when the lead started flying. As it was, many of them had been close enough to hear the shots from Smoke and Charlie’s guns. And from the guns of the outlaws.
Code of the Mountain Man Page 15