“Preacher said there was a going settlement here back in ’55. I wonder where everyone went?”
They saw an overgrown cemetery and going over to check it, saw a handful of rotting grave markers. The latest date they could find was fourteen years ago.
“Must’ve been some disease come to kill most of ’em off,” Smoke suggested. “And the ones that didn’t die, left.”
They went back to explore the buildings, and finding a nail, Smoke built a fire, heated the nail, then with a hammer flattened the nail, then curled it into a crude ring. When the ring cooled, he showed it to Nicole. “Not much of a ring, I’m afraid.”
“I would rather have this than a band of gold,” Nicole said.
Smoke slipped it onto Nicole’s third finger of her left hand.
“Nicole, I love you. And with this ring, I declare you to be my wife.”
“And I declare you to be my husband,” Nicole said.
They kissed.
Old Main Building
“That’s when I learned that I had warrants out on me, and that there were bounty hunters on my trail, particularly Potter, Stratton, and Richards.”
“I don’t want to bring up unpleasant memories,” Professor Armbruster said. “But weren’t those men involved in Nicole’s murder?”
Smoke’s mouth tightened, and he nodded. “Yes,” he said. “But you’re getting a little ahead of the story.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s all right. It’s just that I haven’t told this story, I haven’t even thought about it, in many, many years. I think it might be good to get it all out of my system now. It started with Preacher.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Del Norte, Colorado—Fall 1870
Preacher was walking toward a saloon when he saw a young man wearing a brace of pearl-handled pistols.
“Hey, grandpa! You a little old to be out by yourself, ain’t you?”
Preacher didn’t say a word in response to the young punk, nor did he look at him, or even change his stride. But as he walked by, he drove the butt of his rifle into the loudmouth’s stomach. The young man bent over double, puking in the street. Unable to resist, Preacher pulled the two pistols from the loudmouth’s holsters. He dropped the pistols into the horse trough, then went into the saloon, where he ordered a whiskey with a beer chaser.
A moment later the town marshal came into the saloon and stepped up to the bar.
“You’re the one they call Preacher, ain’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You have a young friend, a gunman named Smoke, I believe. Thought you might like to know that the bounty’s been upped. Someone’s wantin’ him real bad.”
“Who is it that’s a-wantin’ him?”
“That would be Potter, Stratton, and Richards. Potter is into politics, Richards is in mining and cattle, and Stratton owns the town of Bury. They want the boy, and they got the money to get the job done. What did the boy do, to get ’em so mad?”
“He knows where a lot of gold is buried, gold that them three stole from the Confederacy, then the boy’s papa stole back from them,” Preacher said.
“I figured it had to be somethin’ like that. There’s a couple of gunfighters out on the front porch, Felter and Canning, and they got some more hardcases with them, camped just north of town.”
“I thank you,” Preacher said.
Preacher left town a short while later.
He knew he was being watched, but he thought it was Indians, and the Indians didn’t worry him, because, for the most part, he and the Indians had gotten along well for the last fifty years. He was surprised when he felt a hammerblow to his shoulder, the heavy slug tearing through the tissue to come out his back.
“Get him alive, don’t kill him! He can tell us where Jensen is!” someone shouted.
Preacher felt a second slug tear into his leg, careen off his leg bone, then rip a big hole in his hip, taking a piece of bone with it. Now Preacher saw the three men who were following him. He snaked his Henry from the sheath, and began firing, jacking new a new shell into the chamber after each shot, getting off three rounds in less than four seconds. Two of the men were knocked from their saddles, and he knew that it had been killing shots that took them down. He shot the horse of the third man and it went down, crushing its rider beneath him.
With the three men down and Preacher badly wounded, he rode on, barely able to stay in the saddle. When night came he picketed his horse and wrapped himself up in a blanket, not sure if he would live through the night, but determined to do so, so he could warn Smoke.
Old Main Building
“Preacher did survive the night, and though I don’t know how he did it, managed to stay alive long enough to get back to the cabin I had built for Nicole and me,” Smoke said.
“He was badly shot up, his leg was infected, I don’t know how he could stand the pain. Finally he put on his best buckskins, then telling us good-bye, rode off, presumably to die.”
“But he didn’t die then, did he?” Professor Armbruster asked.
“No. For the life of me, I don’t know how he survived, but he did.”
“Then, your baby was born?”
“Yes, the baby was born with the first snow that winter, and we named him Arthur, after Preacher. There was nobody there but Nicole and me. She told me how to cut the umbilical cord. I did that,” Smoke chuckled, “then she sent me outside because she thought I was getting sick.
“We were taking a chance on staying there, but I knew that as long as the passes were filled with snow, that the bounty hunters looking for me wouldn’t be able to get through. That meant that, for the time being at least, we were safe . . . but come spring we were going to have to move.
“Then, come April, just before we were going to leave, a really bad thunderstorm broke, and it scattered the herd of horses we were raising. I had to get them back. I hated leaving Nicole and the baby but . . .” Smoke stopped speaking for a moment, and waved his hand.
The professor moved the toggle switch on the speaker box. “Wes, hold it for a moment, would you?” Professor Armbruster said.
“Yes, sir,” Wes replied, his voice coming back over the box.
“Take your time, Smoke.”
“It’s been fifty-two years,” Smoke said. “You wouldn’t think I would still feel it this intensely. I’m sorry.”
“Nonsense, you have nothing to be sorry about,” Professor Armbruster replied. “Some memories are so firmly embedded that they aren’t just a part of our minds, they are also a part of our souls.”
“Yes. I love Sally, very much, and we have had a wonderful marriage. But there will always be a part of me that loves, and misses, Nicole and our baby.”
“Would you like a drink of water? A cup of coffee?”
“A cup of coffee would be good.”
Again, Professor Armbruster spoke into the box. “Wes, we’re going to take about a half-hour break.”
“Very good, sir.” Wes replied.
Smoke followed Professor Armbruster into the staff and faculty lounge, where there was a table on which stood a big coffeemaker and a large silver tray of doughnuts.
Professor Armbruster drew a cup of coffee and handed it to Smoke, then made another for himself. Smoke walked over to look through the window, out onto the campus. He saw half a dozen young men wearing raccoon coats, straw hats, and white spats, and he chuckled.
“Raccoon coats,” he said. “They came along too late for the trappers of my generation. Beaver and marten, that’s all anyone wanted then. About the only thing coon was good for was eating, and making caps. Now look.”
“It started back East in the Ivy League schools,” Professor Armbruster said. “Now, no college man is worth his salt if he isn’t wearing a raccoon coat.”
“Preacher and John would have had a big laugh over this.”
“Have you ever seen a football game, Smoke?” Professor Armbruster asked.
“I’ve seen a few of the high school game
s in Big Rock. The Trappers, they call themselves.”
“Yes, we’ve gotten some players here, from Big Rock. Have you ever seen a college game?”
“No.”
“You absolutely have to see one while you are here. I do hope you and Mrs. Jensen will be my guests for the football game this weekend.”
“Yes, we would be pleased to come to the game,” Smoke said.
A car drove up in front of the building, a Model T Ford, sporting fox and raccoon tails and bearing painted signs: STRUGGLE BUGGY, 23 SKIDOO, IT’S THE BERRIES, IT’S A LOLLAPALOOZA, and of course, GO BUFFALOS, referring to the Colorado football team.
The driver, who was also wearing a raccoon coat, squeezed the bulb on the horn mounted on the door of his car, and several laughing young men and women hurried toward him.
Smoke shook his head as he watched them, and wondered how many of them could survive one year in the Rockies on their own. He finished his coffee, then took the empty cup back.
“Professor, I’m ready to go back, if you are.”
“Absolutely,” Professor Armbruster replied.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“All right, Wes, we’re ready to go again,” Professor Armbruster said into the little intercom box.
“Very good, sir,” Wes replied.
“Now, Smoke, if you are up to it, we’ll continue with where we left off.”
“Yeah,” Smoke said. “I wasn’t gone very long. By the second day I had found most of my herd and I closed them up in a canyon, keeping them there until I could find the rest of them. Then, late in the afternoon of the second day, I thought I heard gunfire. But when I stopped to listen, I didn’t hear anything, so I figured it must just be wind blowing through the trees.
“I started back home on the third day and . . .” Smoke stopped and shook his head, “I don’t know how to explain it, but I suddenly got the strongest feeling of dread. I knew something had happened.
“When I got there, I saw one of them, a man named Grissom. I shot him. Then I saw someone just pushing open the door to the outhouse, and I shot him. The next one was a young punk, would-be gunman who called himself Kid Austin.
“When I ran to the back of the house I saw”—Smoke paused and took a deep breath—“I saw my baby, lying dead in the grass. He had just been tossed out like trash.
“Someone started taunting me from inside the house. I had Preacher’s Sharps with me. I wasn’t worrying about hitting Nicole; I knew she was dead. So I fired through the wall, and heard someone screaming. I found out later that the big Sharps had torn his arm off.
“A moment later, several men rode off at a gallop. But there was one left, a man named Clark. He was taunting me from the house, but he was crouching, looking out the back door, when I came in through the front. I got the drop on him, and when I saw Nicole, and what they had done to her, scalping her, partially skinning her, I felt an anger unlike anything I had ever felt before or since.
“Clark was on his hands and knees, begging me for mercy. I kicked him in the side of head, and knocked him out. Then I took him outside, stripped him naked, smeared his body with honey, and staked him out over a big hill of fire ants.
“I could hear him screaming the whole time I was digging a grave for Nicole and the baby. He was still screaming when I rode off, and I could hear him for at least half a mile.”
“So you set things right. You avenged her murder.”
“Nicole had been raped, murdered, scalped, and partly skinned. My boy was killed and tossed out the back door of the cabin like so much trash. There’s no way you can make that right.”
“I’m sorry, of course I didn’t mean it like that. But you did kill the ones who murdered your family, did you not? I don’t mean just the ones you killed at the cabin. I mean, one of the stories about you is how you tracked down and killed all the others as well. Is that true, or is it all a myth?”
“The story is true.”
“Because of the research I’m doing, I have a repository of books about you, many of them pertaining to that very event. And of course, there is the Jack Holt movie about it . . . Where There Is Smoke, There Is Fire.”
Smoke chuckled. “It was Sally who came up with that title. A couple of the people associated with the film didn’t like the title but Jack loved it, and he is the one that managed to get it through.”
“It is a clever title,” Professor Armbruster said.
“I think so,” Smoke agreed.
“The problem with all these accounts, the movie, the books, the many articles, is that they vary so widely. Some say you killed fifty men that day, some say a hundred. I don’t suppose anyone knows for sure.”
“I know.”
“Well, how many was it?”
“Eighteen.”
“Eighteen?”
“I killed four of them there at the cabin. Then I went after the others and caught up with them at the silver-mining camp near the Uncompahgre. The four I killed at the cabin, and the fourteen more I killed in town, make eighteen.”
“That’s quite an accomplishment. I can see why so much has been written about it.
“After your wife and son were killed, you remarried though. I believe she was a schoolteacher?”
“Yes, but that wasn’t for two more years.”
“And you had two children?”
“We did. We had twins, Louis Arthur and Denise Nicole.”
“I’m sorry to keep bringing up unpleasant memories, but they are both deceased now, aren’t they?”
“Yes. They went to Europe to be educated. Denise died and was buried there. When Louis came back, he decided to stay East with Sally’s family, where he became a lawyer. Sally and I didn’t see much of him after that. We were never actually estranged, we just sort of went our separate ways. Ironically, Louis also died in France, and is buried there.”
“Yes, I have done some research. He was a pilot who received the Medal of Honor.”
[I have located the citation which accompanied the Medal of Honor award, and post it here for the edification of the reader:
“After having previously destroyed a number of enemy aircraft, Captain Louis Arthur Jensen voluntarily started on a patrol after German observation balloons. Though pursued by eight German planes which were protecting the enemy balloon line, he unhesitatingly attacked and shot down in flames three German balloons, being himself under heavy fire from ground batteries and the hostile planes. Severely wounded, he descended to within one hundred fifty feet of the ground, and flying at this low altitude near the town of Murvaux, opened fire upon enemy troops, killing six and wounding as many. Forced to make a landing and surrounded on all sides by the enemy who called upon him to surrender, he drew his automatic pistol and defended himself gallantly until he fell dead from a wound in the chest.”—ED.]
“Do you know what I find particularly fascinating about your son receiving the Medal of Honor? I mean other than the obvious intrepidity he displayed.”
“What is that?”
“There were no American witnesses to his action. All the facts of his heroism, including notarized eyewitness accounts, were from the Germans themselves. I find it fascinating that the details of his heroism were sent through the lines, along with his body, by the German army. They were that impressed with his bravery.”
“I spoke to one of the Germans who was there that day,” Smoke said.
“You did?”
“Yes. Last year Sally and I crossed the Atlantic onboard the ocean liner Homeric.”
“That must have been fascinating.”
“It was. But, Professor, we are getting way afield here. Don’t you think we should get back to John Jackson?”
“Yes, of course. Where did we leave off with Mr. Jackson?”
“He and Claire had just built themselves a cabin.”
Upper Missouri River
John began chopping down trees and sizing the logs, and Claire debarked them, using a crowbar and a spud, which was like a hoe . . . but
with a straight blade. John used ropes and his horse and mule to pull the logs into position, then, when he had the walls up, Claire chinked in between them with twigs and mud. While Claire was filling in between the logs, John made a roof of smaller-diameter limbs. When the roof was completed, it was covered with sod.
The cabin had a single room that was twelve feet square. The floor was dirt, but John promised that they would have a wood floor as soon as he could get around to it. There was only one door and no windows. John put the fireplace at one end of the cabin and built the chimney of wattle and daubed mud. Stone and clay were used for the hearth and the interior of the fireplace.
It took a lot of hard work, but two weeks after the first log was cut, they were able to spend the night in their own house. For the next month, John and Claire built furniture for their house, a bed, a table and some chairs, and some shelves.
By the time the first snows came, they were warm and snug in their house, and Claire announced that she was pregnant.
“Wow! Then we have to celebrate!” John said. “You know what? I think it must be nearly Thanksgiving. Yes, I’m sure it is. I’m going to kill us a turkey, and we’ll have an old-fashioned Thanksgiving Day dinner, just the two of us.”
John did kill a turkey and the aroma of it cooking filled the inside of the little cabin so that by the time it was ready to eat, they were both ravenous. John smiled as he carved up the turkey for them.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said.
“What is Thanksgiving?”
“You’ve never heard of Thanksgiving?”
“No.”
“Well, then I’ll tell you the story.”
For the rest of the afternoon John told the story of the Pilgrims, and their voyage to America on the small ship, the Mayflower. He told of the men and women who left England in search of religious freedom.
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