Last Mountain Man

by Johnstone, William W.

  A chill was in the morning air when Preacher rode up to the cabin on the knoll in the valley. He was a gaunt shell of the man who had ridden out in the middle of the summer. Through sheer iron will, stubbornness, and hard-headed cantankerousness, he had brought the pack animals with him.

  “Howdy, purty thing.” He grinned at Nicole. “I brung your durned ol’ cannin’ jugs.” Then he fell from his pony and into the arms of Smoke.

  They tended to his wounds, as best they could, for his leg had become infected and it was swollen and grotesque. Nicole turned a tear-stained face to her husband.

  “I think he’s dying, Smoke.”

  “Bend down here, son,” Preacher said. “I got something to tell you — and don’t argue with me. I ain’t time for no debate.”

  Smoke squatted beside the bed.

  “I covered my back trail,” Preacher whispered. “So you be safe for a time.” Slowly and with much pausing for breath, he told Smoke and Nicole what he knew, and about the gold in the bottom of his father’s grave at the Hole.

  “When your woman births the baby, wait till spring and then get the hell out of this country. Find you a safe place to live out your lives. Right now, you get my fancy buckskins out of that there trunk over in the corner and then leave me be for a while.”

  On the porch, Nicole asked, “What is he going to do?”

  Smoke sighed heavily, a numbness gripping his heart. “Get all dressed up in his fancy buckskins and sash and such, prepare himself to die, mountain-man style.”

  Smoke and Nicole sat on the porch of the cabin and waited, listening as Preacher hummed a French song as he dressed.

  “I don’t know why he’s doing this,” Nicole said, tears running down her face.

  “He’s doing it because he’s a mountain man.” Smoke’s eyes were on the mountains in the distance. “I’ve got to do something.” He rose and walked to the lean-to.

  He selected a gentle horse, a mare, too old for breeding. He saddled her and took her back to the cabin. Preacher was waiting with Nicole on the porch.

  Preacher’s eyes touched the horse, returned to Smoke. “I see you didn’t forget ever’thing I learned you.”

  “No, sir,” Smoke said, fighting back tears. “Preacher? What is your Christian name?”

  The old man smiled. “Arthur was my first name — why?”

  “Because if we have a son, I want to name him after you.”

  “That’d be right nice. Now help me on that nag yonder and stand back.”

  Preacher was dressed in clean, beaded buckskins. His dying suit. He wore new leggings and moccasins and a wide red sash around his waist. A cap of skunk hide and hair on his head.

  “You look grand,” Smoke said.

  “You tell lies, too,” Preacher retorted. “Help me on the mare.”

  In the saddle, Preacher looked at Smoke. “You know I’m gonna shoot this horse, don’t you, son?”

  Smoke nodded. Nicole put her face in her hands and wept. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “So I can have something to ride when my human body is gone, girl. So don’t you fret and carry on. One old life is endin’, but you carryin’ new life. That’s the way of the world.” He looked at Smoke. “You be mindful of what I learned you, boy, you hear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He rode off without looking back, riding toward the high, far mountains. There, he would select his place to die. He would go out of this world as he had lived in it — alone.

  “You know what?” Smoke said to Nicole, as they stood and watched him disappear. “I never even knew his last name.”

  Autumn touched the valley under the shadows of the great mountains, painting the landscape with a multicolored brush: the grass a deep tan, the trees golden, the sky blue, and the flowers white and purple and red. On a huge rock by the banks of the creek, Smoke chipped Preacher’s name, when he died, and his approximate age. The course of the creek has long since shifted, the bed now part of grazing land, but the huge rock remains. And far in the mountains, high above the West Delores, time and wind have scattered the bones of man and horse. But some locals say that in early fall, on a clear night, if one listens with ears and heart, you can hear the sounds of a slow-moving old mare, carrying a grizzled old mountain man. The old man is singing a French song as he completes his circle, before dismounting to rest for another year, his eyes on a valley far off in the distance.

  Of course, that’s just a myth. A local legend. Folklore. Certainly isn’t real. But in the 1930s when the CCC boys were working in the valley, they tried to move the huge boulder with four names chipped deep into it. Something frightened them so badly none of them would ever again go near the boulder. Work was halted at the site.

  The local rancher would only say, “I told you so.”

  And some say Preacher did not die of his wounds, but lay near death in an Indian village for months, while one of his daughters took care of him. Some say the old man returned to help the man called Smoke in his vendetta. Many people insist that is the way it happened. That Preacher and Smoke …

  Well, that’s another story.

  As the winds changed from cool to cold, and the first flakes of snow touched the valley, Nicole gave birth to a boy.

  While Smoke paced the cabin floor, feeling totally inadequate — which, in this situation, he was — a tiny squall of outrage filled the bedroom, as breath was sucked into new lungs. Nicole’s hair was stuck to her head from sweaty, painful exertion, and her face was pale.

  “Take the knife,” she told her husband. “And cut the cord where I show you.”

  His hand trembled and he hesitated for a second. Her sharp command brought him back.

  “Do it, Smoke!”

  The umbilical lifeline severed, the baby washed, the tiny wound on his belly bandaged, Nicole wrapped the boy in clean white cloths and the baby nursed at her breast.

  “You look like you’re going to be sick,” Nicole told him. “Go outside.”

  He did and thought, what I know about birthing babies would fill volumes. And what I know about the inner strength of women would, too.

  When he again entered the house, Nicole was nursing the child at her breast, and Smoke thought he had never seen a more beautiful sight. He stood in speechless awe.

  Fed, warm, and secure, the child then slept beside its mother.

  “You sleep, too,” Smoke told her. “I’ll stand watch.”

  “If baby Arthur starts to cry,” she said wearily, “just take him.”

  “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  She smiled at him. “It will come natural to you. Just keep your hand under his head for support.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Smoke said.

  Nicole drifted off into sleep and after an hour, the child awakened. With much trepidation, the young man took his son in his big, work-hardened hands and held it gently.

  “Now what do I do?” he said.

  The baby looked up at him.

  “Arthur,” Smoke said. “You behave, now.”

  And the baby, like his namesake, promptly started squalling and grousing.

  Winter locked in the valley and Smoke knew, as long as the hard winter held, the three of them would be safe from the stalled pursuit of the bounty hunters. But in the spring, their coming would be inevitable and relentless. Smoke would have to move his family to a safer place.

  But where?

  His smile was grim. Sure, why not. Right under their noses would be the last place they would look. Idaho. He would have to hang up his .36s — maybe get a new Remington or Colt — carry just one gun. Use Seven for breeding, never for riding. Maybe, he thought, they could pull it off.

  Preacher drifted into his mind. God, how he missed that ornery old man, so full of common sense and mountain wisdom. He would have been a great companion for the baby.

  Smoke shook his head. But Preacher was gone. And the living have to go on living. Preacher told him that.

  He struggled to remember wh
at Preacher had told him about Idaho Territory. He recalled Preacher telling him there was a lake on the eastern pan (Gray’s Lake). So wild and beautiful and lonely it had to be seen to be believed. No white men lived there, Preacher said. So that’s where Smoke would take his family to live, hopefully, in peace.

  But he wondered if he could ever live in peace. And that ever present speculation haunted him, especially when he looked at his wife and son.

  If anything ever happened to them …

  Baby Arthur cooed and gurgled and grew healthy and strong and much loved during the winter of 1871–72. He would be big-boned and strong, with blond hair and blue eyes that flashed when he grew angry.

  The three of them waited out the winter, making plans to leave the valley in late spring, when the baby was six months old, and they felt he could stand the trip. They both agreed it would be taking a chance, but one they had to take.

  In a settlement that would soon wear the name of Telluride, in the primitive area of the Uncompahgre Forest, bounty hunters also waited for spring. They were a surly, quarrelsome bunch as the cold days and bitter nights drifted toward spring. With them, a young man who called himself Kid Austin. Kid was quick with a pistol — perhaps the quickest of them all — but the only man he had ever killed was a drunken old Mexican sheepherder. Even with the knowledge that the Kid was untested, the bounty hunters left him alone. For he was uncommonly fast and quick-tempered. And because the man they hunted was a friend of the old mountain man who had humiliated the Kid in front of that saloon. Kid Austin thus hated the man called Smoke. He dreamed of killing this Smoke, of facing him down in a street, beating him to the draw, and watching him die hard in the dirt, crying and begging for mercy, while men stood on the boardwalks and feared him, and women stood and wanted him. Those were his dreams — all his dreams. Kid Austin was not a very imaginative young man. And he would not live to dream many more of his wild dreams of glory and power.

  Felter was a patient man, who shared none of the Kid’s dreams. Felter didn’t know how many white men he had killed. He thought it to be around twenty-five, and nobody gave a damn how many Indians. He slowly spun the cylinder of his Colt. “They got to be in that valley, southwest of the San Juan’s. Everything points in that direction.”

  “That old Ute we talked to,” Canning said. “He said something ’bout a blond-haired woman called Little Lightning. That could be Smoke’s woman.” He grinned. “You boys can have the gunfighter; I’ll take me a taste of his wife. I’d like to hump me a yeller-haired white woman. Man gits tired of them greasy squaws.”

  “You rape all the squaws you take a mind to,” a bounty hunter named Grissom told him. “Don’t nobody give a damn ’bout them. But you bother a white woman, you gonna get yourself hung.”

  Canning’s grin spread across his unshaven face. “Not ifn I don’t leave her alive to talk about it, I won’t.”

  “That there is a thought to think about,” Grissom agreed. “But that Ute said she was all swole up with kid, gettin’ ready to turn fresh.”

  “So?”

  “What about the kid?”

  Canning shrugged that off. “I ’member the time up in north Colorado when we hit an Injun camp — surprised them. That were fun. After we had our fun with some young squaws, I found me a papoose just a-hollerin’ and grabbed him up by the heels. Swung him agin a tree. Head popped like a pistol shot.”

  “That were a Injun kid. This here be a white baby.”

  “No never-mind. Richards said to kill ’em all. Don’t want to leave no youngun around to grow up and git mean.”

  The bounty hunters all agreed that made sense. And they would pleasure themselves with the woman — then kill her.

  “I want Smoke,” Kid Austin said. The older bounty hunters smiled. “I want him face on so’s I can beat him at his own game. You all just watch me.”

  “Yeah, Kid,” a man called Poker said. “You a real grizzly, you are.”

  “I just need one chance.”

  It’s probably the only one you’ll get, too, Felter thought. ’cause if the Preacher look him under his wing and taught him right, this Smoke will be a ring-tailed looter.

  The first week in April, a violent pre-season thunderstorm, spawned by a week of abnormally warm weather, struck the valley, scattering the herd of breeding horses.

  “I’ve got to get some of them back,” Smoke said. “We’ve got to have them for breeding stock. But I hate to leave you and Little Preacher alone.” His face was worry lined, for he knew with the warm weather, the bounty hunters would be riding hard to get him.

  She laughed away his fears. “We have to get that cow back for milk, and there is no telling where that fool cow ran off to. And don’t forget, I’m a pretty good shot.”

  “I might be gone for several days.”

  “Honey,” she said touching his face, “it was the hand of Providence that brought us that cow — Lord knows how it got out here. But you’ve got to get it back for the baby.” She pressed a packet of food on him. “I’ll be packing while you’re finding the herd — and the cow.” She laughed. “You always look so serious when you’re milking.”

  “Never did like to milk,” he said.

  He left reluctantly, knowing he had no choice. As he rode away on Seven, he stopped once, turning in the saddle, looking back at his wife, holding their son in her arms. The sun sparkled off her hair, casting a halo of light around the woman and baby. Smoke lifted a hand in goodbye.

  Nicole waved at him, then turned and walked back into the cabin.

  To the northeast, still many hard miles away, just leaving the last fringes of heavy forest and tall mountains behind them, rode the bounty hunters. Since the middle of March they had fanned out in the mountains, asking questions of any white man and several friendly Indians. The Indians told them nothing, but several white drifters told them of a cabin in the valley, on a knoll, with a little creek running behind it. Where the Delores leaves the San Juans, head southwest, you can’t miss it.

  Canning’s thoughts were of the yellow-haired woman.

  Felter thought about the money.

  Kid Austin thought of being the man who killed the gunfighter/outlaw Smoke. What a name he’d have after that — and all the women he wanted.

  Smoke worked long hours, gathering his precious herd of mustangs and Appaloosa, tucking them in a blind canyon, holding them there while he searched for the others. He found the cow and the old brindle steer that had wandered up with her, probably, Smoke concluded, the only survivors of an Indian attack on a wagon train.

  During the late afternoon of the second day out, Smoke thought he heard the faint sounds of gunfire carrying on the wind, blowing from the north, but he could not be certain. He listened intently for several moments. He could hear nothing except the winds, sighing lonely off the far mountains. He returned to his work.

  “Fine-lookin’ woman,” Canning said, looking at Nicole. She was sprawled in semi-awareness on the floor. His eyes lingered on her legs where her dress had slid up when she was knocked to the floor. The bodice of the dress was ripped open, exposing her breasts. Canning licked his lips.

  The bounty hunters had destroyed the interior of the cabin, looking for gold that was not there.

  One bounty hunter sat in a chair, cursing as he bandaged a bloody arm. “She can shoot,” he said. “Damn near tore my arm off. Somebody see ifn you can find a bottle of laudanum.”

  Felter’s eyes found the body of Stoner lying in front of the cabin. “Yeah, she sure can shoot. Just ask Stoner.”

  “If he answers you,” Kid Austin said, “the back door’s mine.”

  They all laughed at this.

  “Drag his body out of sight,” Felter said. “Don’t want to spook this Smoke when he rides up. And hide your horses. We’ll take him when he comes in.”

  Kid Austin opened his mouth to protest.

  “Shut up,” Felter cut him off. “Maybe you’ll get a crack at him, maybe not. I’d like to take him alive
, torture him, find out where the gold is.”

  He knelt down beside Nicole, his hands busy on her body.

  Arthur began crying.

  “Shut that kid up!” Felter snarled. “’Fore I shoot the little snot.”

  Canning picked up a blanket and walked to the cradle. He folded the wool and held it over the baby’s face for several minutes. The child kicked feebly, then was still as life was smothered from it.

  Nicole was stripped naked and shoved into the bedroom. Her hands were tied to the bedposts. Arthur was silent, and Nicole knew, with the awareness mothers seem to possess, her son was dead.

  She began weeping.

  She opened her eyes, and through the mist of tears, watched Canning drop his trousers to the floor.

  The perverted afternoon and evening would wear slowly for Nicole.

  And Smoke was a day’s ride from the cabin on the knoll in the valley.

  Thirteen

  On the morning of the third day out, Smoke pushed his horses closer to the cabin, a feeling of dread building within him. Some primitive sense of warning caused him to pull up short. He left the cow, the steer, and the horses in a meadow several miles from the cabin.

  He made a wide circle of the cabin, staying in the timber back of the creek, and slipped up to the cabin.

  Nicole was dead. The acts of the men had grown perverted and in their haste, her throat had been crushed.

  Felter sat by the lean-to and watched the valley in front of him. He wondered where Smoke had hidden the gold.

  Inside, Canning drew his skinning knife and scalped Nicole, tying her bloody hair to his belt. He then skinned a part of her, thinking he would tan the hide and make himself a nice tobacco pouch.

  Kid Austin got sick at his stomach watching Canning’s callousness, and went out the back door to puke on the ground. That moment of sickness saved his life — for the time being.

  Grissom walked out the front door of the cabin. Smoke’s tracks had indicated he had ridden off south, so he would probably return from that direction. But Grissom felt something was wrong. He sensed something; his years on the hoot-owl back trails surfacing.