Code of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

Louis shook his head. “No, my friend. That wouldn’t stop most of them. The blood lust is high and hot now. They’re like hungry predators on a blood scent.”

  Smoke drained his coffee cup and tossed the dredges. “Let’s get moving. We’ve got to find a place that we can defend.”

  * * *

  “He’ll make it,” the young doctor said, stepping out of the room and gently closing the door behind him. “That is one tough man in there.”

  Charlie Starr was sleeping with the aid of some laudanum.

  The doctor dropped three chunks of lead on the table. “I dug one out of his leg, one out of his side, and another was lodged in his arm. Another bullet grazed his head. He’ll have a frightful headache for a time, and a hat would be uncomfortable, but he’ll be flat on his back a long time before he needs a hat.”

  “Don’t you bet on that,” Lilly told him. “That’s a warhoss in there in my bed.” She grinned wickedly. “And it ain’t the first time he’s been in my bed.” The doctor blushed. “I’ve wore him down to a frazzle a time or two myself. You got any pills you want me give him?”

  “You’re staying with him?”

  “Night and day until I’m sure he’s all right.”

  Earl stepped into the room. “You’ve got to see this, Johnny,” he said. “You might never see another sight like it.”

  Johnny walked outside and stood with Earl and Cotton, staring at the lawyer Larry Tibbson. Larry had bought himself some cowboy clothes, from hat to boots, and was wearing two pearl-handled .45s and carrying a Winchester rifle. There was a bandoleer of ammo looped across his chest.

  “He wants to be a deputy,” Earl said.

  “Boy,” Johnny said, after he recovered from his shock at the sight. “Are you tryin’ to get yourself killed?”

  “I am going into the mountain to aid Miss Sally,” Larry said stiffly.

  “Miss Sally don’t need no aid from you,” Johnny bluntly told him. “Boy, if you go blundering around up in them mountains, you probably gonna get lost and eat up by a bear. That’s the best way you might leave this world. The worst is gettin’ taken alive by them outlaws and havin’ them stick your bare feet in a fire for the fun of it.”

  “I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” Larry informed him. “I’ll have you know that I belong to the New York City Pistol Club, am a very good shot, and have been duck-hunting many, many times.”

  “That’s good, Lawyer. Dandy,” Cotton said. “I’m proud of your accomplishments. But have you ever faced a man who was shootin’ at you? And plugged him?”

  “Heavens, no!”

  The men stood for fifteen minutes, begging and pleading with Larry to give up his plan. He stood firm. Finally Earl sighed. “Go get me a badge, Cotton. We’ll swear him in. That might give him some edge.”

  “Get him killed,” Cotton said. He stepped off the boardwalk and paused, looking back. “I seen Mills in town just before the stage run. Did he say anything to any of you? He looked sort of jumpy to me. Excited, I guess it was.”

  “No,” Earl said. “I saw him. He met the stage and was gone before I could talk to him. And I wanted to tell him about Charlie.”

  “I wonder what he’s got up his sleeve?”

  “I shall endeavor to join with that stalwart group,” Larry said.

  “Whatever that means,” Cotton said, walking off.

  * * *

  “Here they are,” Mills said excitedly, jumping from his horse. “The warrants on the Lee Slater gang. Saddle up, men! We’re riding for the deep timber.”

  The men broke camp quickly and were in the saddle within fifteen minutes.

  “We’ve got a few hours of daylight left,” Mills said. “We’ll get in close and camp, hit the outlaws at first light.”

  “Ah ... Mills, we don’t know where they are,” Albert pointed out.

  “We’ll follow the sounds of shooting,” Mills spoke the words in a grim tone. “And we’ll put a stop to it before it can escalate further.”

  The marshals exchanged glances.

  “Pin your badges to your jackets,” Mills ordered. “These men have got to learn to respect the law.”

  “And you think these badges are going to do that?” Moss asked.

  “Certainly!”

  “Right,” Winston said, with about as much enthusiasm as a man going to his own hanging.

  * * *

  Larry was dismayed when he could not find a proper English riding saddle anywhere in town. But he was not discouraged. He left town armed to the teeth, sitting in a Western rig, bobbing up and down in the saddle as he had been taught. The horse wore a very curious expression on its face.

  “He’s gonna get killed,” Cotton predicted.

  “Maybe not,” Earl said. “Men like that seem to lead a charmed life. But there is one thing for certain: he won’t be the same man coming out as he is going in.”

  * * *

  Not a single shot was fired in anger the rest of that day. When the news of the shoot-up on the slopes reached Lee and Luttie, they signaled their men back to camp for a pow-wow.

  Even some of the bounty hunters had lost their enthusiasm for the chase.

  “Has to be bad when Nap and Ace give it up,” Dan Diamond opined.

  “Big Bob gone,” Morris Pattin said. “He was one tough son of a bitch.”

  Several bounty hunters—older, tougher, and wiser hands—quietly packed their gear and pulled out. In the Lee Slater group, Bud, Sack, Cates, Dewey, and Gooden rode into Rio under a white flag and turned themselves in to the sheriffs deputies. Bud had passed out in the saddle a half a dozen times from the pain in his buttocks.

  “We might have to amputate,” the doctor said, after winking at Johnny.

  “Cut off my ass!” Bud yelled, then he really started bellering.

  * * *

  Smoke, Louis, and Sally worked until dark rigging their new defensive position above the timberline in the big lonesome. Smoke planted almost all of his dynamite under heavy boulders in carefully selected spots while Louis rigged deadfalls far below their position; they might not fall for them, but it would make them cautious. Then they all set about gathering up wood for a fire.

  “We’ll take a lot of them out,” Smoke said. “But they’ll eventually breech our position. Just before they do, we’ll slip out through that narrow pass behind us and blow it closed. It’ll take them half a day to work around this range. By that time we’ll be long gone . . . hopefully,” he added. “We’ll have us a good hot meal this evening. They know where we are; our trail is too easy to follow. Anyway, we’ve got to have a fire this high up; we’d freeze to death without it. Let’s settle in and rest and eat. It’s going to get busy come first light.”

  Larry built a fire large enough to endanger the forest. And it wasn’t just for heat. Spooky out here. All sorts of strange sounds were coming out of the darkness surrounding him. Larry imagined huge bears staring at him, vicious packs of wolves, and slobbering panthers waiting to pounce and eat him if he let the flames die down.

  He needn’t have worried about four-legged animals. No woods’ creature would come within a mile of that mini-inferno he kept feeding during the night. All in all, Larry cleared about an acre of land getting fuel for the fire. It looked like Paul Bunyan had been on a rampage.

  “Who in the hell is that down yonder?” Curley asked, looking at the glowing bright spot surrounded by a sea of darkness.

  “That goofy lawyer we was told about,” Carbone said, returning from his stint on guard. “The one with a crush on Sally Jensen.”

  “Oh,” the others said, and dismissed Larry without another thought.

  * * *

  Mills and his marshals came upon Larry just after first light. He was trying – unsuccessfully – to fry a potato in bacon grease.

  “You got to peel it and cut it up first,” Moss told him.

  “Oh,” Larry said. “I employ a cook back home. I’m not much of a hand in the kitchen.”

  “I nev
er would have guessed,” Mills said. “Who are you?” He asked. He’d never seen anyone try to fry a whole potato.

  “I am an attorney from back East. I have come into these battle-torn mountains to offer my assistance in bringing to justice the hooligans and ruffians who are endangering Miss Sally Jensen’s life.”

  “Sally Jensen!” the marshals all hollered. Mills said, “Are you saying that Smoke’s wife has joined him?”

  “Most assuredly. I am not a man of violence, but with this new development, I felt compelled to pick up arms and race to the rescue.”

  “Let me fix breakfast,” Hugh said. “After I build another fire,” he added. “I can’t get within five feet of the one you got.”

  “Are you lost?” Winston asked.

  “Oh, no.” Larry smiled. “I may not be much of a cowboy – as a matter of fact, I’m not a cowboy at all – but I spent some time at sea. It would be difficult to get me lost anywhere. I take my bearings often.”

  “Can you use those guns?” Sharp asked.

  “I’ve never shot a man before. But I’m quite good at target shooting. Have you ever shot a man?”

  “Ah ... no,” Sharp admitted.

  “Any of you?” Larry questioned.

  The marshals all looked embarrassed.

  “This is going to be quite an expedition we’re mounting,” Larry mused.

  Far in the distance, the faint sounds of gunshots drifted to them.

  “I think we’d better forego breakfast,” Larry said.

  * * *

  “Let them bang away,” Smoke said. “They’re far out of range and shooting uphill. All they’re doing is wasting ammunition.”

  Louis lay behind cover and counted puffs of smoke until he grew tired of counting. He looked at Smoke. “Over thirty down there.”

  “And more coming,” Smoke replied, cutting his eyes to the East.

  Sally was looking through field glasses. “Eleven of them. And another bunch right behind them.”

  “How many in the second bunch, honey?”

  “They’re too far off to make out yet. Now they’ve disappeared into the timber.”

  “Gathering like blowflies on a carcass,” Louis said, his words filled with contempt. “Blowflies one day and maggots the next.”

  The three of them were in a natural rock depression with a clear field of fire in all directions except the rear. They had hauled in branches and dead logs the previous afternoon and stacked them to their rear, against the stone face. The wood would soak up slugs and would prevent any ricochets. They had lain in a goodly supply of dry dead wood and had eaten a hardy breakfast and had a fresh pot of hot coffee ready to drink.

  Sally suddenly giggled. Smoke looked at her. “You want to tell me what’s so funny about this situation?”

  “You remember me telling you about a man named Larry Tibbson?”

  “The lawyer fellow from New York who tried to spark you when you both were in college?”

  “That’s whim.”

  “What about him?”

  She brought him up to date.

  Smoke chuckled, the humor touching his eyes. “He’s got nerve, I’ll give him that. Does he have any idea what might have happened to him had I been home?”

  “I think he does now.”

  Louis poured them all coffee in tin cups and passed them around. The air was cold early in the morning; the hot coffee and the small fire felt good to them as they waited.

  The firing stopped.

  “They’ll be moving soon,” Louis said. His eyes touched the eyes of Smoke. The gambler minutely nodded his head. While Sally had slept, Smoke and Louis had talked. Smoke and Sally’s children could get along without a father, but they needed a mother. If bad turned to worse, Louis was to take Sally and make a run for it, even if he had to punch her unconscious to do it. The dynamite was in place, and if Smoke was trapped on this side of the narrow pass, so be it.

  “They’re moving,” Sally said. “They’ll be able to get within range of us.”

  “Yes. Then we’ll start picking them off,” Louis said. “We have all the advantage. Our position is like a fort. We’re shooting downhill, and that is easier to compensate for than shooting uphill. We have food and water and warmth. Know this now, Sally: come the night, they’d overrun us. At dusk, we’re going to start the avalance and make a run for it. I ...”

  “I heard you both talking last night,” she said softly. “You won’t have to knock me out to make me go.” She opened her pack and took out a smaller package wrapped in canvas. “These are medicines and bandages, Smoke. Potions to help relieve pain and to fight infection. I did not include any laudanum. I knew even if you were badly hurt, you wouldn’t take it.”

  He kissed her gently while Louis discreetly looked away, a smile on his lips. She clung to him for a moment, then pulled back and squared her shoulders and took several deep breaths, getting her emotions under control and blinking away the tears that had gathered. “You come back to me now, you hear me, Smoke Jensen?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Smoke smiled at her. “I’m going to take some lead, honey,” Smoke told her. “I’d have to be the luckiest man alive not to. But I’ll make it out of this. And that’s a promise.”

  A slug thudded into the logs they had placed against the rock wall behind them.

  “They’re in range,” Louis said.

  Smoke and Sally moved into position. Sally had lain aside her short-barreled carbine and had taken a longer-barreled, more accurate lever action from the saddle boot of a dead outlaw. She lined up the sights on part of a leg that was sticking out from behind a large rock and squeezed off a round.

  The man started screaming hideously.

  “You busted his knee, baby,” Smoke told her.

  “That’s too bad,” she said with a wicked grin. “I was aiming a little higher than that.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Cease and desist,” Mills shouted to a group of riders. “I’m a United States Marshal.”

  The riders all jerked iron and began pouring lead at the marshals and Larry. They dove for cover, leading their horses into timber.

  “I’m a deputy sheriff of this county!” Larry shouted. “I order you in the name of the law to stop this immediately.”

  A slug howled past his nose and slammed into a tree, spraying him with bits of bark and bloodying his chin.

  “Cretinous son of a bitch!” Larry mumbled, from his suddenly attained position flat on his belly on the ground. “No respect for law and order.”

  “You’re learning,” Mills said. “I had to.”

  The riders dismounted and took cover, continuing their firing at the marshals and Larry.

  “Did you recognize any of them?” Winston asked.

  “No. I think they’re bounty hunters. But that doesn’t make any difference now.” Mills eared back the hammer on his Winchester.

  “What do you mean?” Larry asked.

  “They were warned as to who we are; they ignored that and fired at lawmen. That makes them criminals.” Mills sighted in one of the manhunters who had taken cover behind a tree that was just a tiny bit too small. He shot the man and knocked him sprawling. “Fire, damnit!” he ordered his men.

  * * *

  Two of the outlaws, or bounty hunters – the trio on the mountain didn’t know and didn’t care which – tried to carry the man with the busted knee down the slope. Smoke and Louis dropped them. The wounded man began his long rolling slide down the slope, screaming in pain as he hit rocks and scrub bushes. When he reached a flat, he lay still, either dead or unconscious.

  “Riders coming,” Sally announced, handing Smoke the field glasses.

  Smoke studied the men. “Luttie Charles and his bunch. I count ... ten, no, eleven of them.”

  “Getting crowded down there,” Louis remarked, biting the end off of an expensive imported cigar he’d taken from a silver holder and lighting up. When the ash was to his liking he laid the stogie aside and punched two more rounds
into his rifle and jacked back the hammer, sighting in on an exposed forearm.

  “That’s a good hundred and fifty yards,” Smoke said. “Five dollars says you can’t make the shot.”

  “You just lost five dollars,” the millionaire industralist /adventurer/gambler said, and squeezed the trigger.

  The man yelled as the slug rendered his arm useless. He rolled to one side and exposed a boot. Smoke shot him in the foot, and the outlaw began the slow slide down the slope, hollering and screaming as he rolled and slid downward.

  One man jumped out from cover to stop his buddy and Smoke, Sally, and Louis dusted the ground all around him. It was too far for accurate shooting, but after doing a little dancing, the outlaw jumped back into cover, unhit but with a new respect for those three on the mountain.

  The arm and foot-shot outlaw rolled off a plateau and fell screaming for several hundred feet. His screaming stopped when he impacted with solid rock. It sounded like a big watermelon dropped from a rooftop to a brick street.

  “Fall back! Fall back!” the shout drifted to the trio. “This ain’t no good. We’ll take them come the night.”

  “Nap time,” Louis said, and promptly stretched out, his hat over his face, and went to sleep.

  * * *

  The bounty hunters – those left alive – called out their surrender to Mills. They had suffered two dead and four wounded. Mills ordered the dead buried. When that was done, he lined up the living.

  “I just don’t have the time to arrest you properly and transport you into Rio for trial and incarceration,” he told them. “But I have your names – whether they are your real names is a mystery that might never be solved – and your weapons. Ride out of here and don’t come back. If I ever see any of you again, I shall place you under arrest and guarantee you all long prison terms. Now, move!”

  The manhunters gone, the marshals and Larry exchanged glances. They were all a little shaky from the fire-fight, but all knew they had grown a bit in the experience field.

  “I would say we conducted ourselves rather well,” Larry said, trying to stuff and light his pipe with trembling fingers. He finally gave it up and put the pipe into a pocket.

  “You did well,” Mills said, putting a hand on Larry’s shoulder. “I believe we all proved our mettle. I’m proud to ride with you, Larry.”