Honor of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Smoke glanced up from his bacon and eggs. “You figuring on going up against Murdock and his gang alone?”

  Wells nodded. “Don’t know no other way. One thing I learnt in the war, sometimes a lone man kin do more damage than an entire brigade.”

  Smoke considered what Wells said. “You’re probably right. If this Murdock is as crooked as Monte says, he’s most likely got his ranch set up like a fort. A frontal assault wouldn’t stand a chance of succeeding. And his brother, the sheriff, would be sure to warn him if a group of strangers showed up.”

  “One man, though, slippin’ in under cover o’ darkness, could be in an’ out ’fore they knew what hit ’em.”

  Louis tipped smoke from his nostrils and contemplated the plume as it rose toward the ceiling. “Getting in won’t be the problem. Getting out is another matter.”

  Wells’s face grew hard. “I figger ta take some lead all right, but if’n word gits around in Mexico that you kin shoot up Joey Wells and not pay the price, then I’m good as dead anyhow.”

  “There is that to consider,” Smoke said as he finished his coffee and stood. “However, if you’re not in too big a hurry to kill those bandidos, I’d be proud to have you spend a day or two out at Sugarloaf.”

  Wells hesitated. “Well ...”

  Smoke shrugged. “It’s a long ride to Pueblo, and you don’t want to take on that bunch until you’re well rested.”

  “And you won’t find a better cook or hostess in Colorado than Sally Jensen,” Louis added.

  “You gents talked me into it. I’ll just feed and water my hoss and we kin be on our way.”

  “While you do that, I’ve got to go see Monte about some wanted posters on me that are still floating around New Mexico. It shouldn’t take me more than a half hour or so.”

  Wells reached into his pocket, but Louis held up his hand. “There’s no charge for the food. Consider yourself my guest as long as you’re in town, Mr. Wells.”

  Wells stuck out his hand. “Like I said, my friends call me Joey.”

  He and Smoke walked through the batwings and Smoke pointed out the livery stable before he turned to walk toward Monte’s office.

  Wells stepped into his saddle and began to walk his big roan stallion down the street, eyes searching rooftops and alleys out of lifelong habit. As he passed the general store, he saw a figure step out of shadows, a rifle to his shoulder pointing at Smoke’s back. Wells drew and fired in one motion, his .44-caliber slug entering the ambusher’s left eye, blowing out the back of his head.

  When the Colt boomed, Smoke crouched, wheeling, his hands full of iron. He saw Wells’s pistol leaking smoke, still aimed at the bushwhacker as he toppled backward. The streets filled with people, Monte and Jim coming on the run with Greeners leveled at Wells.

  “Hold on, Monte!” Smoke yelled. “Joey saved my life!”

  A crowd gathered around the body as Smoke bent to check him for life. He was dead as a stone. “This is one of the gang of bounty hunters that attacked me this morning.”

  “Bounty hunters? There’s no bounty on you,” Monte said.

  Smoke pulled the folded poster from his shirt pocket and handed it to the sheriff. “It’s a long story. Come on over to your office and I’ll fill you in.”

  Before leaving, he stuck out his hand, staring into Wells’s eyes. “Joey, I owe you.”

  In the West, this was more than a statement—it was a pledge. A promise that whenever or wherever Wells needed help, Smoke would be there for him.

  Wells took Smoke’s hand, shrugging. “I never could abide back shooters.” He leaned over and spit in the corpse’s face before leading his horse toward the livery.

  Monte said in a low voice, “I guess this means you’re gonna help him go up against Murdock.”

  Smoke grinned without answering, his face alive with savage anticipation.

  Chapter 5

  Sally and Joey hit it off immediately. Perhaps she saw in the small, proud man the same qualities that had attracted her to Smoke Jensen—his independence, his refusal to allow anyone to hurt his family or friends without paying the price, and his complete lack of pretension and arrogance. For his part, Sally reminded Joey of his wife, Betty. Fiercely loyal to her man, she accepted without question any friend of Smoke’s as a friend of hers, and nothing was too good for the gentleman who had saved her lover’s life.

  Sally outdid herself with supper, stuffing the two men with beefsteak, homemade biscuits, and fresh vegetables from her garden until they couldn’t eat another bite. After the meal she shooed them out to the porch with mugs of rich, dark coffee and cigars while she cleaned the kitchen.

  Smoke called Cal and Pearlie from the bunkhouse to meet his guest, and the two young cowboys were thrilled to make the acquaintance of such a living legend. Cal even brought over a couple of dime novels written by Ned Buntline that had Joey’s picture on the cover, blowing away a group of Kansas Redlegs.

  Smoke laughed when Joey blushed, embarrassed by the teenager’s obvious hero worship. The pistoleer finally got serious, looking directly into Cal’s eyes as he said, “Cal boy, killin’ a man ain’t hardly never nothin’ ta be proud of, no more’n killin’ a rattler is. Truth is, ever one o’ those Redlegs forfeited their right ta live by what they done in the war.” He hesitated while he puffed on his cigar, watching smoke drift on the cool night breeze. “Killin’ in a war, face-ta-face in battle, is one thing, an’ I don’t have no hard feelin’s again any soldiers, blue or gray, who fought with honor. But the Redlegs turned their backs on honor an’ gunned down unarmed men an’ boys who’d given up their weapons an’ surrendered.”

  Cal said, “Tell us what happened, Mr. Wells. How did you let them git the drop on you?”

  Joey smiled sadly, his eyes far away. “It’d been a long, cold war, boy. My men and I had been livin’ in our saddles for what seemed like months, with no word of back home or kinfolk nor nothin’. We’d been livin’ like animals, hunted, runnin’ when we had to, only ta stop and turn occasionally and attack back at ‘em when they was least expectin’ it.”

  Joey paused to build a cigarette, stick it in the corner of his mouth, and take a drink of coffee before he continued. “The Redlegs raided and burned Dayton, Missouri, an’ we retaliated by doin’ the same thing ta Aubry, Kansas. They dogged our tails all the way back ta the mountains on that little fracas.”

  He leaned back against a porch post and stared at the stars as he spoke. “We slept in our saddles, or in the timber under bushes an’ leaves an’ grass, shivering, never darin’ ta unsaddle our hosses.” He glanced at Cal. “Slept with the reins in our hands most o’ the time. Covered our hosses’ hooves with burlap or cloth to muffle the noise they made and tried to slip through the Indian Nations back to Texas. Had to take some time to heal our wounded and replace our grub an’ ammunition.”

  “When you got safely back to Texas, why didn’t you just stay there?” asked Cal, his eyes wide in the starlight.

  Joey shook his head. “T‘weren’t the way of it, Cal boy. The Missouri Feud don’t say you fight till yore tired an’ hungry an’ then quit. Nope, the way o’ the feud is ta fight till ya win or ya die.”

  Joey reached up a finger to flick the ask off his cigarette, then continued. “As the ‘Federates began to lose more an’ more o’ their battles, an’ the blue-bellies began to git thick as fleas on a hound dog along the border, we started to lose some o’ the best we had. Bloody Bill died with his hands filled with iron, Bill Quantrill was kilt in a runnin’ gunfight, and lots more whose names I cain’t recollect just now was lost to the feud.

  “When Lee surrendered at Appomattox, word started circulatin’ that we’d git amnesty pardons if’n we surrendered.” He nodded, looking down at his hands clasped around his mug of coffee. “Lots of the boys were gittin’ homesick, wantin’ ta see their mamas and papas and wives again.

  “We sat ‘round the campfire, talkin’ it up an’ down and all around. One of the fellahs said he’d been t
a town and saw a poster that said if’n we’d raise our hands and promise not ta cause no more grief and be loyal ta the Union, an’ turn in our guns, we’d be set free ta go on back home.”

  He looked at Smoke. “You fought in the war, Smoke. You must know how good that sounded ta boys who’d been in the bush fightin’ fer nigh on three year or more.”

  Smoke nodded, staring at his cigar tip, watching the smoke curl and twist on the evening breeze. “Yes. After a while it seems you only dreamed about home, and many young men began to feel it wasn’t real, only the fighting and dying were real.”

  Joey grinned, his scar making the smile into a sneer. “That’s the way it was, all right. I sat there ‘round that fire, my hat pulled down low, holdin’ the reins of my hoss as I always did, and thought it over. By then I was might near the oldest and toughest of the bunch, an’ I knew they was waitin’ ta see which way I’d tilt.

  “I didn’t want no more friends ta die in my arms or ‘cause o’ me and my feud. I didn’t say nothin’ when ol’ George Tilden tole ‘em he was ridin’ in. He got up and stepped into his saddle, and they all to a man follered him.”

  He grinned again. “Damn if they wasn’t a ferocious-lookin’ bunch o’ men. Most of us carried three or four pistols, a shotgun or two, and maybe a rifle in a saddle boot. Lot of knives too, but we didn’t git ta use them overly much, most of our fightin’ bein’ from horseback.

  “They stopped when they saw I was still squattin’ by the fire. Davey Williams asked me if’n I was goin’ in, an’ I tole him I reckoned not.

  “Tilden tipped his hat an’ wished me luck, as did the others. They rode off toward the Union camp five miles to the south, ready to make their peace an’ git on home.”

  Pearlie asked softly, “Why didn’t you go, Joey?”

  Joey flipped his cigarette out into the night, took a cigar when Smoke offered it, and thought silently for a moment. “It’s a hard thing to explain, Pearlie. I guess I just didn’t have no place to go home to. My cabin was burnt ta the ground an’ my family all kilt.” He shook his head, his eyes glittering in the light as he struck a lucifer and held the burning flame to his stogie. “An’ the mountain code I’d always been raised ta believe in said ya didn’t quit a feud till yore enemies was all dead.” He cut his eyes to Pearlie, and the fierce look in them made Pearlie sit back, as if he were afraid he might be attacked.

  “My loyalty was ta my dead wife and baby, and my obligation was ta the feud.” He shrugged. “It was as simple an’ as complicated as that, I guess.

  “One boy stayed with me, Collin Burrows. He’d been ridin’ with me more’n two years an’ he said he didn’t have no place ta go neither.”

  Cal said, “What happened when the others tried to turn themselves in?”

  Joey’s eyes took on a haunted look, as if the ghosts of his past were not far from his thoughts.

  “Tilden led our boys right up to the Union camp, hands held high, white ’kerchiefs tied to rifle barrels.”

  Joey took the cigar out of his mouth, spit on the ground, then replaced it between his lips. “Colonel Waters an’ his second in command, Johnny Sutter, welcomed ’em in with big grins on their faces, tellin’ ’em they was doin’ the smart thing.”

  He sighed. “Collin an’ me watched from a ridge overlookin’ the camp. We stood there in mistin’ rain with our hands over our mounts’ noses so they wouldn’t smell the other hosses and nicker. After Colonel Waters got all our boys guns an’ such, he walked back to his tent and closed the flap.”

  Joey’s eyes narrowed. “Guess he didn’t have the stomach to watch what was gonna happen next. Sutter lined the boys up and tole ‘em ta raise they right hands an’ swear allegiance to the Union. While they was swearin’, Sutter gave a signal an’ some blue-bellies pulled up a tarp on a wagon containin’ a Gatlin’ gun.”

  Joey paused and Cal sucked in his breath, knowing what was coming.

  “Their soldiers cranked the handle on that gun and mowed my boys down like they was cuttin’ wheat in a harvest.”

  Pearlie said, “Oh, no! What’d you do?”

  Joey pursed his lips. “Collin an’ me swung into our saddles an’ charged right into that camp, both our hands filled with iron. I put a ball into Sutter’s arm, spinnin’ him around, and then took out five or six others with my Colts. Collin did the same, an’ we jest kept right on ridin’ on through the camp, screamin’ an’ givin’ our rebel yells.”

  Cal’s eyes were big in the moonlight. “And you both got away?”

  Joey shook his head. “We got away, but Collin took a rifle bullet in his chest. Took ‘im four days ta die, four days o’ pain an’ agony as we hid from the blue-bellies in swamps and creek bottoms while they searched fer us.”

  “Did you kill Sutter?” Smoke asked.

  Joey’s lips curled. “Not then. He survived that wound. Took me another year and a half ’fore I finally stood face-ta-face with him and blew him to hell for what he done that day.”

  He glanced at Smoke, his eyes cold and hard. “When those soldiers shot my friends down like that, they became no better’n animals an’ deserved what they got.”

  Smoke nodded. “Kind of like those bandidos of Murdock’s.”

  “Yep,” Joey said, staring at the end of his cigar, glowing in the darkness.

  “Bandidos?” asked Pearlie.

  When Joey didn’t answer, Smoke told Cal and Pearlie about how the Rurales and Apaches raided Joey’s ranch and wounded his wife and son, and how Joey planned to make them pay for what they had done.

  “But,” Cal protested, “you can’t go up against an entire gang of thirty or forty men by yourself.”

  Smoke spoke up before Joey had a chance to reply. “He isn’t going to be alone—I intend to be there with him.”

  Joey looked up quickly. “That ain’t my plan, Smoke!”

  “I know, but seeing as how I’d be lying in Big Rock with my brains decorating the dirt if you hadn’t taken a hand, I’m obligated to return the favor.”

  “But . . .”

  “No buts, Joey. It’s a matter of honor, and two men stand a better chance of coming out of this alive than only one.”

  Cal and Pearlie glanced at each other, smiled, and nodded. Pearlie said, “An’ four men stand a better chance than two. Cal and I’d be proud to ride with you and Smoke, Joey.”

  Joey looked from one to the other of his new friends gathered around him on the porch, his eyes soft. “Thank you, boys, but a man’s got to kill his own snakes and saddle his own horse.”

  Cal snorted, smiling. “ ’Cept when a snake needs killin’, it don’t much matter who kills it, long as it gits kilt! Now”—he hitched up his belt and expanded his chest—“when do we ride?”

  Joey laughed and looked at Smoke. “This boy’s plumb full o’ piss an’ vinegar!” Joey hesitated a moment, then said, “Tell ya what. I’ll mosey on over ta Pueblo, an’ if I see I can’t get the job done alone, I’ll send for you boys first thing.”

  Smoke shook his head, his eyes sad. “If that’s your last word, we have to accept your wishes, but I still think you’re making a mistake.”

  Joey shrugged. “Won’t be the first I made.”

  Smoke nodded at Cal and Pearlie. “Now, you two rough-and-tumble pistoleers get on over to the bunkhouse and get some sleep. Daylight’s going to come mighty early, and you still got some fences to mend before first snowfall.”

  The two young men took off toward the bunkhouse with disappointed glances back over their shoulders.

  Joey shook his head, smiling. “You got a couple o’ good boys there, Smoke. They kin o’ your’n?”

  “No. I just got lucky in the hiring, I guess,” Smoke said, thinking of the different ways the two youngsters had come to work for him. Calvin Woods, going on seventeen now, had been just fourteen when Smoke and Sally had taken him in as a hired hand. It was during the spring branding, and Sally was on her way back from Big Rock to Sugarloaf. The buckboard was piled high with sup
plies, because branding hundreds of calves makes for hungry punchers....

  * * *

  As Sally slowed the team to make a bend in the trail, a rail-thin young man stepped from the bushes at the side of the road with a pistol in his hand.

  “Hold it right there, miss.”

  Applying the brake with her right foot, Sally slipped her hand under a pile of gingham cloth on the seat. She grasped the handle of her short-barreled Colt .44 and eared back the hammer, letting the sound of the horses’ hooves and the squealing of the brake pad on the wheel mask the sound. “What can I do for you, young man?” she asked, her voice firm and without fear. She knew she could draw and drill the young highwayman before he could raise his pistol to fire.

  “Well, uh, you can throw some of those beans and a cut of that fatback over here, and maybe a portion of that Arbuckle’s coffee too.”

  Sally’s eyebrows rose. “Don’t you want my money?”

  The boy frowned and shook his head. “Why, no, ma’am. I ain’t no thief, I’m jest hungry.”

  “And if I don’t give you my food, are you going to shoot me with that big Colt Navy?”

  He hesitated a moment, then grinned ruefully. “No, ma’am, I guess not.” He twirled the pistol around his finger and slipped it into his belt, turned, and began to walk down the road toward Big Rock.

  Sally watched the youngster amble off, noting his tattered shirt, dirty pants with holes in the knees and torn pockets, and boots that looked as if they had been salvaged from a garbage dump. “Young man,” she called, “come back here, please.”

  He turned, a smirk on his face, spreading his hands. “Look, lady, you don’t have to worry. I don’t even have any bullets.” With a lightning-fast move he drew the gun from his pants, aimed away from Sally, and pulled the trigger. There was a click but no explosion as the hammer fell on an empty cylinder.

  Sally smiled. “Oh, I’m not worried.” In a movement every bit as fast as his, she whipped out her short-barreled. 44 and fired, clipping a pine cone from a branch, causing it to fall and bounce off his head.

  The boy’s knees buckled and he ducked, saying, “Jiminy Christmas!”