Rod relaxed and grinned at Johnny. “Some other time, North.”
“I’m easy to find, goofy.”
“Anything else you gentlemen need to know before we pull out?” Luttie asked.
“That about does it, I suppose,” Earl told him.
“Ain’t you lawmen gonna wish us luck?” One-Eyed Jake asked.
“Personally, I hope you fall off your horse and break your damn neck,” Cotton told him.
“You ain’t got no call to talk to me like that!” Jake protested.
“You wanna do something about it?” Cotton challenged.
“Let’s ride, boys,” Luttie said. “We got a killer to bring to justice.”
“Maybe later,” One-Eyed Jake said.
“Anytime,” Cotton told him.
The Seven Slash crew and the hired guns who rode among them slopped out up the muddy street.
“Sixteen more after Smoke’s hide,” Johnny spoke the words bitterly. “Smoke’s gonna need all the luck and skill he can muster to come out of this alive.”
“How about them wires you sent, Earl?” Cotton asked.
Earl shook his head. “The marshal’s service is out of it. But until a panel of federal judges can gather and review all the evidence against Smoke, the warrants stand.”
“Damn!” Louis said.
“Quite,” the Englishman said. “And Sheriff Silva said if we went into the mountains to help Smoke, there would be warrants issued for us. He said he was sorry about that, but that was the way it had to be.”
“I can understand that,” Johnny said. “He’s stickin’ his neck out pretty far for Smoke now.”
Louis looked toward the mountains. “We’ve all been concentrating on how Smoke is doing. I wonder how Sally is coping with all this?”
* * *
“Sally’s gone!” Bountiful yelled, bringing her buggy to a dusty, sliding halt.
“What?” Sheriff Monte Carson jumped out of his chair. “What do the hands say?”
“I finally got one of them to talk. He said he took her down to the road day before yesterday, and she hailed the stage there. He said she had packed some riding britches in her trunk, along with a rifle and a pistol. She was riding the stage down to the railroad and taking a train from there. Train runs all the way through to the county seat. Lord, Lord, Monte, she’s just about there by now. What are we going to do?”
Monte led her into his office and sat her down. Bountiful fanned herself vigorously. He got her a drink of water and sat down at his desk. “Nothin’ we can do, Miss Bountiful. Sally’s gone to stand by her man. And them damn outlaws and manhunters down yonder think they got trouble with Smoke. I feel sorry for them if they tangle with Miss Sally. You know she can shoot just like a man and has done so plenty of times. She’s a crack shot with rifle and pistol. Smoke seen to that.”
“I just feel terrible about this. I should have guessed something was up when I saw her oiling up that .44 the other day. But out here . . . well, we all keep guns at the ready.”
“T’wasn’t your fault, Miss Bountiful. She’s doin’ what she feels she has to do, is all.” He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with a bandana. “This situation is gettin’ out of hand.”
* * *
Lee Slater and his bunch came upon Blackjack just as he was getting back on his feet. The man’s face was swollen from the kick he’d received from Smoke. That kick had put him out for nearly half an hour.
“Cut my cinch and smashed my guns,” Blackjack mumbled. “I’m gonna kill that dirty bastard!”
“There’s a lot of people been sayin’ that,” Ed told him. “So far the score is Jensen about fifteen and the other side zero. And we’re the other side.”
Someone rounded up a horse for Blackjack and loaned him a spare gun. Blackjack swung the horse’s head.
“Where are you goin’!” Lee shouted.
“To kill Smoke Jensen,” Blackjack snarled. “And this time I’m gonna do it.”
Lee started to protest. Curt waved him silent. “Let him go. You know how he is. When he gets mad, he’s crazy. Hell, we’re better off without him until he cools down.”
“ ’Spose he gets to Jensen afore we do?” Ed asked.
“They’ll be one less to share the re-ward money with,” Curly said. “Blackjack ain’t gonna take Jensen; ’lessen he shoots him in the back.”
“Let’s make some coffee,” Ed suggested. “I could do me with some rest.”
None among them had considered how, as wanted outlaws, they would collect any reward money should they manage to capture Smoke.
* * *
Nearly everyone on Main Street had seen the elegantly dressed lady step off the train and stroll to the hotel, a porter carrying her trunk. As soon as she signed her name, the desk clerk dispatched a boy to run fetch the sheriff.
Sally had signed the register as “Mrs. Smoke Jensen.”
Sheriff Silva was standing in the lobby, talking to several men, and he nearly swallowed his chewing tobacco when Sally walked down the stairs.
She was wearing cowboy boots and jeans—which she filled out to the point of causing the men’s eyeballs to bug out—a denim shirt which fitted her quite nicely too, and was carrying a leather jacket. She had a bandana tied around her throat, and a low crowned, flat-brimmed hat on her head. She also wore a .44 belted around her waist and carried a short-barreled .44 carbine, a bandoleer of ammo slung around one shoulder.
“Jesus Christ, Missus Jensen!” Sheriff Silva hollered. “I mean, holy cow. What do you think you’re gonna do?”
“Take a ride,” Sally told him, and walked out the door.
Silva ran to catch up with her. “Now you just wait a minute, here, Missus Jensen. This ain’t no fittin’ country for a female to be a-traipsin’ around in. Will you please slow down?”
Sally ignored that and kept right on walking at a rather brisk pace.
She turned into the general store and was uncommonly blunt with the man who owned the store. “I want provisions for five days, including food, coffee, pots and pans and eating utensils, blankets, ground sheets, and tent. And five boxes of .44s, too. Have them ready on a pack-frame in fifteen minutes. Have them loaded out back, please.”
“Now you just hold up on that order, Henry,” Sheriff Silva said.
“You’d better not cross me, Henry,” Sally warned him, a wicked glint in her eyes. “My name is Mrs. Smoke Jensen, and I can shoot damn near as well as my husband.”
“Yes’um,” Henry said. “I believe you, ma’am.”
“And you,” Sally spun around to face the sheriff, “would be advised to keep your nose out of my business.”
“Yes’um,” Silva said glumly, and followed her to the livery.
Sally picked out a mean-eyed blue steele that bared its teeth when the man tried to put a rope around it. Sally walked out into the corral, talked to the big horse for a moment, and then led it back to the barn. She fed him a carrot and an apple she’d picked up at the store, and the horse was hers.
“That there’s a stallion, ma’am!” Silva bellered. “He ain’t been cut. You can’t ride no stallion!”
“Get out of my way,” she told him.
“It ain’t decent, ma’am!”
“Shut up and take that pack animal around to the back of the store.”
“Yes’um,” Silva said. “Whatever you say, ma’am.” While Sally was saddling up, he turned to the hostler. “Send a boy with a fast horse to Rio. Tell them deputies of mine down there that Sally Jensen is pullin’ out within the hour and looks like she’s plannin’ on joinin’ up with her husband. Tell them to do something. Anything!”
“Sheriff,” the hostler said, horror in his voice. “Don’t look. She’s a-fixin’ to ride that hoss astride!”
“Lord, have mercy! What’s this world comin’ to?”
* * *
“Looking for me, boys?” Smoke called.
Crocker and Graham spun around, dropping their coffee cups, and grabbi
ng for iron.
But Smoke was not playing the gentleman’s game. His hands were already filled with .44s. He began firing, firing and cocking with such speed the sounds seemed to be a continuous roll of deadly thunder. Crocker literally died on his feet, two slugs in his heart. Graham was turned completely around twice before he tumbled to the earth. He died with his eyes open, flat on his back and staring upward.
Smoke reloaded, listened for a moment, and then walked to the fire, eating the lunch and drinking the coffee the outlaws had fixed and no longer needed.
He drank the pot of coffee, kicked out the fire and left his tired horse to roll and water and graze, throwing a saddle on a fresh horse that was tied to a picket pin. He took what was left of a chunk of stale bread, sopped out the grease in the frying pan to soften it up, and finished off his lunch.
He looked at Crocker and Graham. “Nothing personal, boys. You just took the wrong trail, that’s all.” He swung into the saddle and put the camp of the dead behind him. Ray’s group came upon the bodies of Crocker and Graham and sat their horses for a time, looking around the silent camp.
“I’d like to think they et a good meal ’fore Jensen or that damned ol’ Charlie Starr come up on them,” Keno said. “But if I was to bet on it, I’d wager that Jensen kilt ’em and then sat down an’ et their food.” He shook his head. “We’re gonna lose this fight, boys. Somebody is shore to get lead in Jensen, least the odds lean thataway, but in the end, we’ll lose.”
Sonny shook his head. “It just ain’t possible what he’s a-doin’. By rights, we should have kilt him the first day or two. This makes nearabouts ten of us he’s kilt—and half a dozen or more bounty hunters—and we ain’t got no clear shot at him yet. I just ain’t likin’ this, boys.”
Jerry nodded his head in agreement. “I got me a bad feelin’ in my guts about this fight. But, hell, way I see it, we ain’t got no choice ’cept to go on with it.”
Ray swung down from the saddle. “Let’s give the boys a buryin’. Stoke up that far, McKay, make some coffee.”
* * *
“We got no quarrel with you, Charlie,” Luttie told the old gunfighter. “It’s Jensen we’re after.”
Charlie had stepped out of the timber, blocking the trail. His hands were by his side, by the butts of his guns, and his eyes were hard and unblinking. “You got a quarrel with Smoke, you got a quarrel with me. That’s the way it is. So I hope you made your peace with God.” He jerked iron and opened the dance.
Two of Luttie’s hands went down before anyone could react to the sudden gunfire. Horses were rearing and screaming in fright; several of the riders were dumped from the saddle. Charlie shot Nick Johnson between the eyes, and he fell over against Luttie, knocking the man from the saddle and falling on top of him in the brush.
Charlie took a round in his side, flinched from the painful impact, jerked out two spare six-guns from behind his gunbelt and kept on throwing lead.
A young hand who fancied himself a gunslick pulled iron and jacked the hammer back. One of Charlie’s slugs caught him in the chest and knocked him to the ground. He died calling for his mother.
Charlie’s left leg folded under him as a .45 hit him in the thigh. He went down rolling into the brush. Just as he got to his boots and staggered off into the timber, toward his horse, he turned and blew another of Luttie’s hired guns out of the saddle. Ted Danforth took the slug in the belly and hit the ground. He died on his knees.
Charlie managed to get into the saddle and point his horse’s head south, toward Rio.
“No need to chase after him, Luttie,” Jake said, after the spooked and screaming horses had been settled down. “He’s had it. I seen him take at least three slugs. He’s dead in the saddle by now.”
Luttie looked around him at the carnage. “That old bastard just jumped out and killed five of my men. I ain’t believin’ this!” He was rubbing the bump on his head where his noggin hit a rock. “I started out with sixteen top guns, and my people has been cut damn near a third in less than a minute and a half. Jesus Christ!”
“But now Smoke is alone up here,” One-Eyed Jake pointed out.
“Wonderful,” Luttie said sourly.
* * *
Blackjack reined up when he spotted the ground-reined horse. That wasn’t the horse Smoke had been riding, but he could have changed horses somewhere along the way. Blackjack stepped down from the saddle and took cover behind a tree, his eyes sweeping the area in front of him. He should have been looking behind him.
Blackjack was so mad he wasn’t thinking straight. His head ached where Smoke had kicked him, and his nose and mouth hurt, too. All he could think about was killing Smoke Jensen. And he didn’t want to do it quick, neither. He wanted Jensen to suffer. He had plans for Smoke Jensen. Painful plans.
But a higher power had already checked off Blackjack’s name in the book of life.
“You should have stayed where I left you, Blackjack,” Smoke said from behind the outlaw.
Blackjack whirled around, a curse on his lips and his right hand filled with a .45. Smoke shot him twice, in the belly and the chest as the .44 rose in recoil.
Blackjack sighed once and fell back against the tree he’d thought was giving him cover. The .45 fell from his numbed hand. “Damn you, Jensen!” he gasped.
“Sometimes the cards just don’t fall right,” Smoke told him.
The light was fading around Blackjack.
“Any family?” Smoke asked.
“None that would give a damn about me dyin’.”
“Too bad.”
“You’re a ... devil, Jensen! You musta ... come here from somewhere’s outta hell.” His legs would no longer support him. He slumped to the ground.
Smoke kicked the .45 far from Blackjack’s reach and walked toward his horse, reloading as he walked. Blackjack’s voice stopped him.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Stay with me ’til I’m gone, Jensen—please?”
“All right,” Smoke said.
Smoke walked to him, reached down, and took the .41 derringer Blackjack had slipped from behind his big silver beltbuckle. Blackjack let his hand fall to his side.
“Damn you!” the outlaw moaned. “How’d you know?”
“I didn’t. But people like you never change.” He broke open the derringer and checked the loads. Full. He slipped the tiny gambler’s back-up behind his belt.
“I’ll see you in hell, Jensen!”
“Maybe. I’ve done some things that probably qualify me for that place.”
Blackjack fell over on his side. “We was all so shore about this. Fifty, sixty . . . of us. One of you. I just cain’t understand it.” He shuddered and grabbed the ground in his pain. “What is it that... makes you so damn hard to kill?”
“Maybe it’s because I’m right, and you boys are wrong.”
Blackjack laughed bitterly.
“You got any money you want me to give to a church or an orphanage, Blackjack?”
Blackjack sneered past bloody lips and said some pretty terrible things about churches, orphans, the public in general and Smoke in particular.
He died with a curse on his lips.
“I don’t understand it either, Blackjack,” Smoke said to the dead outlaw.
Smoke stripped the saddle and bridle from Blackjack’s horse and turned the gelding loose. “Run free for a time, boy. You earned it.”
The last mountain man walked to his horse and swung into the saddle. “Let’s go meet what I was born to meet, boy,” he said. “No point in prolonging this.”
Chapter Seventeen
“What?” Earl almost lost his English cool.
“That’s what the sheriff said,” the young man told him. “Missus Sally Jensen is headin’ into the mountains.”
Louis took off his badge and handed it to Earl. “I hereby resign my commission,” he told him. “The rest of you stay here. I’ve got to get into the mountains and head her off.”
“Look!” a citizen s
aid, pointing up the muddy street.
“That’s Charlie!” Johnny shouted, running toward the man who appeared to be unconscious in the saddle.
“Get the doctor!” Cotton yelled, running after Johnny.
They gently took Charlie from the blood-soaked saddle and laid him down on the boardwalk. Charlie’s eyes fluttered open. “I’m hard hit, boys.”
“You’ll make it, you old war-hoss,” Johnny told him.
“I put about five or six of ’em down ’fore they plugged me;” the old gunfighter said. ”Seven Slash bunch.”
“Don’t talk, Charlie,” Lilly LaFevere said, kneeling down beside him.
“Hello, baby,” Charlie grinned up at her. “I ain’t seen you in ten years.”
“Nine,” she corrected him. “We was down on the border. Now hush your mouth.”
“Tired,” Charlie whispered. “Awful tired.”
“Take him to my quarters and put him in my bed,” Lilly told the men. “Move him gentle like. I count three bullet holes in his ornery old hide.” She looked around her. “Where’s that goddamn sawbones?”
“He’s on the way,” a citizen said. “Is that really Charlie Starr?”
“Yeah,” Lilly said. “Now get the hell outta the way and give the man room to breathe.”
“I’m gone,” Louis said. “See you boys later.”
“You got enough grub?” Cotton asked.
“They’ll be food in the saddlebags of the outlaws,” Louis told him. “I’ll have a week’s supply fifteen minutes after I hit the mountains.”
He lifted the reins and was gone.
With his knife and strips of rawhide, Smoke made a pack out of two saddlebags, then carefully repacked all the supplies he’d taken from several dead men. He had a good five days’ food and plenty of ammo.
He tried not to think about when his luck was going to run out.
But he knew it would, sooner or later. The odds were just too great against him.
He was only a few miles away from where he’d left his horses—as the crow flies—but he didn’t want to head there, just yet. He stripped saddle and bridle from his borrowed horse and turned it loose to roll and water and graze. Then he picked up his pack and rifle and headed into the deep timber, to a place he remembered when roaming the country with old Preacher.
Code of the Mountain Man Page 17