Last Mountain Man

by Johnstone, William W.

  “It was war, kid.”

  “But you were on the same side,” Smoke said. “So that not only makes you a killer, it makes you a traitor and a coward.”

  “I’ll kill you for sayin’ that!”

  “You’ll burn in hell a long time before I’m dead,” Smoke told him.

  Ackerman grabbed for his pistol. The street exploded in gunfire and black powder fumes. Horses screamed and bucked in fear. One rider was thrown to the dust by his lunging mustang. Smoke took the men on the left, Preacher the men on the right side. The battle lasted no more than ten to twelve seconds. When the noise and the gunsmoke cleared, five men lay in the street, two of them dead. Two more would die from their wounds. One was shot in the side — he would live. Ackerman had been shot three times: once in the belly, once in the chest, and one ball had taken him in the side of the face as the muzzle of the .36 had lifted with each blast. Still Ackerman sat his saddle, dead. The big man finally leaned to one side and toppled from his horse, one boot hung in the stirrup. The horse shied, then began walking down the dusty street, dragging Ackerman, leaving a bloody trail.

  “I heard it all!” the excited desk clerk ran out the door. “You were in the right, Mr. Smoke. Yes, sir. Right all the way. Why …!” He looked at Smoke. “You’ve been wounded, sir.”

  A slug had nicked the young man on the cheek, another had punched a hole in the fleshy part of his left arm, high up. They were both minor wounds. Preacher had been grazed on the leg and a ricocheting slug had sent splinters into his face.

  Preacher spat into the street. “Damn near swallered my chaw.”

  “I never seen a draw that fast,” a man spoke from his store front. “It was a blur.”

  The sheriff and a deputy came out of the jail, walking down the bloody, dusty street. Both men carried Greeners: double-barreled twelve gauge shotguns.

  “Right down this street,” the sheriff said pointing, “is the doctor’s office. Get yourselves patched up and then get out of town. You have one hour.”

  “Sheriff, it was a fair fight,” the desk clerk said. “I seen it.”

  The sheriff never took his eyes off Smoke. “One hour,” he repeated.

  “We’ll be gone.” Smoke wiped a smear of blood from his cheek.

  Townspeople began hauling the bodies off. The local photographer set up his cumbersome equipment and began popping flash-powder, sealing the gruesomeness for posterity. He also took a picture of Smoke.

  The editor of the paper walked up to stand by the sheriff. He watched the old man and the young gun-hand walk down the street. He truly had seen it all. The old man had killed one man, wounded another. The young man had killed four men, as calmly as picking his teeth.

  “What’s that young man’s name?”

  “Smoke Jensen. But he’s a devil.”

  Nine

  There was a chill to the air when Smoke kicked off his blankets and rose to add twigs to the still smoldering coals. They were camped along the Arkansas, near Twin Lakes.

  “Cold,” Preacher complained, crawling out of his buffalo robe. “Can’t be far from Leadville.”

  “How do you figure that?” Smoke asked, slicing bacon into a pan and dumping a handful of coffee into the pot.

  “Coldest damn town in the whole country.” Preacher put on his hat then tugged on his boots. “I’ve knowed it to snow on the Fourth of July. So damned cold ifn a man dies in the winter, best thing to do is jist prop him up in a corner for the season. Ifn you wanna bury him, you gotta use dynamite to blast a hole in the ground. Tain’t worth the bother. And I ain’t lyin’, neither.”

  Smoke grinned and said nothing. He had long since ceased questioning the mountain man’s statements; upon investigation, they all proved out.

  “Them names on the list, Smoke. Anymore of ’em in Colorado?”

  “Only one more, but we’ll let him be. He’s in the army up at Camp Collins. An officer. Took the name of a dead man who was killed in the first days of the war. I can’t fight the whole Yankee army.”

  “We goin’ back to the Hole?”

  “For the time being.”

  “Good. We’ll winter there. Stop along the way and pack in some grub.”

  Major Powell and his detachment were gone when Preacher and Smoke reached the Hole in mid-September. Two horses were missing from the herd, and the money for them was in the cave. The soldiers had tended to the gardens, eating well from them. Emmett Jensen’s grave had been looked after. But the flowers were dying. Winter was not far off.

  The two men set about making the cabin snug against the winds that would soon howl cold through the canyon, roaring out of Wyoming, sighing off Diamond Peak. Preacher did a little trapping, for all the good it did him, and for awhile, the man called Smoke seemed to be at peace with himself.

  Preacher was surprised and embarrassed that Christmas morning to find a present for him when he awakened. He opened the box and aahed at the chiming railroad watch with a heavy gold fob.

  “That little watch and clock shop in Oreodelphia,” Preacher recalled. “Seen you goin’ in there.” He was suddenly ill at ease. “But I dint get nothin’ for you.”

  “You’ve been giving me presents for years, Preacher. You’ve taught me the wilderness and how to survive. Just being with you has been the greatest present of my life.”

  Preacher looked at him. “Oh, hush up. You plumb sickenin’ when you try to be nice.” He wound the watch. “Reckon what time it is.” He turned his head so Smoke could not see the tears in his eyes.

  Smoke glanced outside, “’bout seven, I reckon.”

  “That’s clost enough.” He set the watch and smiled as it chimed. “Purty. Best present I ever had.”

  “Oh, hush up.” Smoke smiled. “You plumb sickenin’ when you try to be nice.”

  The winter wore on slowly in its cold, often white harshness. In the cabin, Preacher would sometimes sit and watch Smoke as he read and reread the few books in his possession, educating himself. He especially enjoyed the works of Shakespeare and Burns.

  And sometimes he would look at the paper from his father and from Gaultier. And Preacher knew in his heart, whether the young man would admit it or not, he would never rest until he had crossed out all the names.

  In the early spring of ’70, as the flowers struggled valiantly to push their colors to the warmth of the sun, Smoke began gathering his gear. Wordlessly, Preacher did the same.

  “Where we goin’ in such an all-fired hurry?” he asked Smoke.

  “I’ve heard you talk about the southwest part of this territory. You said it was pretty and lonely.”

  “’Tis.”

  “You know it well?”

  “I know the Delores, and the country thereabouts.”

  “Many people?”

  “Not to speak of.”

  “Be a good place to set up ranching, wouldn’t it?”

  “Ifn a man could keep his hair. That where we goin’?”

  “What is there to keep us here?”

  “Nothing a-tall.”

  Pushing the herd of half-broken mustangs and Appaloosa, the two men headed south into the wild country, populated mainly by Ute, but with a scattering of Navajo and Piute. They crossed the Colorado River just east of what would later become Grand Junction, then cut southeast, keeping west of the Uncompahgre Plateau. Out of Unaweep Canyon, only a few miles from the Delores River, they began to smell the first bitter whiffs as the wind changed.

  Preacher brought them to a halt. While Smoke bunched the horses, Preacher stood up in his stirrups to sniff the air. “They’s more to it than wood. Sniff the air, son, tell me what you smell.”

  Smoke tried to identify the mixture of strange odors. Finally he said, “Leather. And cloth. And … something else I can’t figure out.”

  Preacher’s reply was grim. “I can. Burnin’ hair and flesh. You ’bout to come up on what an Injun leaves behind after an attack.” He pointed. “We’ll put the horses in that box canyon over yonder, then we’ll
go take a look-see.”

  Securing the open end of the canyon with brush and rope, the men rode slowly and carefully toward the smell of charred flesh, the odor becoming thicker as they rode. At the base of a small hill, they left their horses and crawled up to the crest, looking down at the horror below.

  Tied by his ankles from a limb, head down over a small fire, a naked man trembled in the last moments of life. His head and face and shoulders were blackened cooked meat. The mutilated bodies of other men lay dead. One was tied to the wheel of the burned wagon. He had been tortured. All had died hard.

  “You said you heared gunfire ’bout two hours ago,” Preacher whispered. “You was right. Gawdamned ‘Pache trick, that yonder is. They come up this far ever’ now and then, raidin’ the Utes.”

  “How did they get a wagon this far?” Smoke asked.

  “Sheer stubbornness. But I hope they weren’t no wimmin with ’em. If so. Gawd help ’em.”

  The men waited for more than an hour, moving only when necessary, talking in low tones.

  Finally, Preacher stirred. “They gone. Let’s go down and prowl some, give the people a Christian burial. Say a word or two.” He spat on the ground. “Gawddamned heathens.”

  Smoke found a shovel, handle intact, on the ground beside the charred wagon. He dug a long, shallow grave, burying the remains of the men in one common grave, covering the mound with rocks to keep wolves and coyotes from digging up the bodies and eating them.

  Preacher walked the area, cutting sign, trying to determine if anyone got away. Smoke rummaged through what was left of the wagon. He found what he didn’t want to find.

  “Preacher!”

  The mountain man turned. Smoke held up a dress he’d found in a trunk, then another dress, smaller than the first.

  Preacher shook his shaggy head as he walked. “Gawd have mercy on they souls,” he said, fingering the gingham. “Man’s a damned fool bringin’ wimmin-folk out here.”

  “Maybe one of them got away?” Smoke said hopefully.

  “Tain’t likely. But we got to look.”

  Almost on the verge of giving up after an hour’s searching, Smoke made one more sweep of the area. Then he saw the faint shoeprints, mixed in with moccasin tracks. The prints were small; a child, or a woman.

  “Good Lord!” Preacher said. “Mayhaps she got clear and run away.” He circled the tracks until he got them separated. “Don’t see none followin’ her. Get the horses, son. We got to find her ’fore dark.”

  It did not take them long to track her. She was hiding behind some brush, at the mouth of a canyon. Movement of the brush gave her away.

  “Girl,” Preacher said, “you come on out, now. You ’mong friends.”

  Weeping was the only reply from behind the brush. Smoke could see one high-top button shoe. A dainty shoe.

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” he said.

  More weeping.

  “They’s a snake crawlin’ in there with you,” Preacher lied.

  A young woman bolted from behind the brush as if propelled from a cannon barrel, straight into the arms of Smoke. With all her softness pressing against him, she lifted her head and looked at him through eyes of light blue, a heart-shaped face framed with hair the color of wheat. They stood for several long heartbeats, gazing at each other, neither of them speaking.

  Preacher snorted. “This ain’t no place for romance. Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Preacher griped and groused, but the young woman insisted upon returning to where the members of her family were buried. She stood for a few moments, looking down at the long, narrow grave.

  “My aunt?” she questioned.

  “Looks like the savages took her,” Preacher said.

  “What will they do to her?”

  “Depends a lot on her. Was she a looker?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Was she a handsome woman?”

  “She was beautiful.”

  Preacher shrugged. “Then they’ll probably keep her.” He did not tell the young woman her aunt might have been — by now — raped repeatedly and then tortured to death. “They’ll work her hard, beat her some, but she’ll most probably be all right. Some buck with no squaw will bed her down. Then agin, they might trade her off for a horse or rifle.”

  “Or they might kill her?” she said.

  “Yep.”

  “You don’t believe I’ll ever see her again, do you?”

  “No, Missy, I don’t. It just ain’t likely. Down in Arizony Territory, back ’bout ’51 or ’52, I think it was, the Oatman family tried to cross the desert alone. The Yavapais kilt the parents and took the kids. A boy and two gals. The boy run off, one of the gals died. But Olive Oatman lived as a slave with the Injuns for years. They tattooed her chin ’fore she was finally traded off for goods. It’s bes’ to put your aunty out of your mind. I seen lots of white wimmin lived with Injuns for years; too ashamed to come back to they own kind even ifn they could.”

  The young woman was silent.

  “What’s your name?” Smoke asked.

  “Nicole,” she said, then put her face in her small hands and began to weep. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have any family to go back to. I don’t have anyone.”

  Smoke put his arms around her. “Yes, you do, Nicole. You have us.”

  “Just call me Uncle Preacher,” the mountain man said. “Plumb disgustin’.”

  Smoke rummaged around the still smoldering wagon, looking for any of Nicole’s clothing that might have escaped the flames. He found a few garments, including a lace-up corset, which she quickly snatched, red-faced, from him. He also found a saddle that had suffered only minor damage. Everything else was lost.

  “Now, how you figure she’s a-gonna sit that there saddle?” Preacher demanded. “What with all them skirts and petti-things underneath?”

  “She’s not. She found a pair of men’s trousers that belonged to her uncle. She can ride a straddle.”

  “That ain’t fittin’ for no decent woman. Ain’t nobody ‘ceptin’ a whoore’d do that!”

  “What the hell d’you wanna do? Build a travois and drag her?”

  Preacher walked away, muttering to himself.

  Nicole came to Smoke’s side. “I can sit a saddle. I rode as a child in Illinois.”

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  “No. I’m from Boston. After my parents died, when I was just a little girl, I came to Illinois to live with my uncle and aunt. What’s your name?”

  “Smoke. That’s Preacher.” He jerked his thumb.

  She smiled. She was beautiful. “Just Smoke?”

  “That’s what I’m called.”

  “At a trading post, we heard talk of a gunfighter called Smoke. Is that you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “They said you’d killed fifty men.” There was no fear in her eyes as she said it.

  Smoke laughed. “Hardly. A half dozen white men, maybe. But they were fair fights.”

  “You don’t look like a gunfighter.”

  “What does a gunfighter look like?”

  She smiled, white even teeth flashing against the tan of her face.

  “Carryin’ on like children at a box social,” Preacher muttered.

  Nicole went behind a boulder to change out of her tattered and dusty dress. Preacher walked up to his young protégé.

  “What are you aimin’ to do with her?”

  “Take her with us. We sure can’t leave her out here.”

  “Well, hell! I know all that. I mean in the long run. Nearest town’s more’un a hundred miles off.”

  “Well, I … don’t know.”

  The mountain man’s eyes sparkled. “Ah,” he said. “Now I get it. Got your juices up and runnin’, eh?”

  Smoke stiffened. “I have not given that any thought.”

  Preacher laughed. “You can go to hell for tellin’ lies, boy.” He walked off, chuckling, talking to himself. “Yes, siree,” he calle
d, “young Smoke’s got hisself a gal. Right purty little thing, too. Whoa, boy!” He did a little jig and slapped his buckskin-clad knee. “Them blankets gonna be hotter than a buffalo hunter’s rifle after a shoot.” He cackled as he danced off, spry as a youngster.

  Smoke’s face reddened. What the young man knew about females could be placed in a shot glass and still have room for a good drink of whiskey.

  “What is Preacher so happy about?” Nicole asked, walking up behind him.

  Smoke turned and swallowed hard. Luckily, he did not have a chew of tobacco in his mouth. The men’s trousers fitted the woman snugly — very snugly. The plaid man’s shirt she now wore was unbuttoned two buttons past the throat, and that was about all the young man could stand.

  Smoke lifted his eyes to stare at her face. She was beautiful, her features almost delicate, but with a stubborn set to her chin.

  She had freshened up at the little creek and her face wore a scrubbed look.

  “Uh …” he said.

  “Never mind,” Nicole said. “I’m sure I know what he was laughing about.”

  “Ah … I’ve saddled a little mare for you. She’s broke, but hasn’t been ridden lately. She may kick up her heels a bit.”

  “Mares do that every now and then,” Nicole said coyly, smiling at him.

  “Uh … yeah! Right.”

  “Smoke?” She touched his thick forearm, tight with muscle. “I’m not trying to be callous or unfeeling about … what happened today. I’m just … trying to put it — the bad things — behind me. Out of my mind. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” He touched her hand. Soft. “Come on. We’d better get moving.”

  When Nicole swung into the saddle, the trousers stretched tight across her derriere. Smoke stared — and stared. Then his boot missed the stirrup when he tried to mount and he fell flat on his back in the dust.

  “I knowed it!” Preacher said. “Knowed it when I seen ’em a-lookin’ at one ’nother. Gawd help us all. He’ll be pickin’ flowers next. Ifn he can git up off the ground, that is.”

  The trio pushed the horses and followed the Delores down to its junction with Disappointment Creek. There, they cut slightly west for a few miles, then bore south, toward a huge valley. They would be among the first whites to settle in the valley. Long after Smoke had become a legend, the town of Cortez would spring up, to the south of the SJ Ranch. Midway in the valley, by a stream that rolled gently past a gradually rising knoll, Smoke pulled up.