It was almost over.
Smoke reloaded his Remingtons, dropped the spare .44s to the dirt, and took a deep breath, feeling a twinge of pain from at least one broken rib, maybe two.
Felter had sat behind kegs of beer in the tent saloon and watched it all. He had had a dozen or more opportunities to shoot Smoke from ambush — but he could not bring himself to do it. Jensen was just too much of a man for that. He poured himself a glass of whiskey and shook his head.
What he had seen was the stuff legends are made of; it was rare — but it was not unknown to the West for one man to take on impossible odds and win.
He stood up. “I believe I can take you now, Smoke,” he muttered. “You got to be runnin’ out of steam.”
“Felter!” Smoke called. “Step out here and face me.” Blood dripped from his wounds to plop in the dust. His face was bloody and blood and sweat stained his clothing.
Smoke carefully wiped his hands free of sweat just as Felter stepped out of the tent saloon. Both men’s guns were in leather. Felter held a shot glass full of whiskey in his left hand. Smoke’s right thumb was hooked behind his gun-belt, just over the buckle. Twenty-five feet separated them when Felter stopped. The miners were silent, almost breathless on the hillside, watching this last showdown — for one of the men.
“I seen it, but it’s tough for me to believe. You played hell with my men.”
Smoke said nothing.
“You and me, now, huh, kid?”
“That’s it, and then I take out your bosses.”
Felter laughed at him and sipped his whiskey. “I just don’t think you can beat me, kid.”
“One way to find out.”
“I think you’re scared, Smoke.”
“I’m not afraid of you or of any other man on the face of this earth.”
His words chilled the outlaw. He mentally shook away that damnable edge of fear that touched him.
Felter drained the shot glass. Whiskey and blood would be the last thing he would taste on this earth. “Your wife sure looked pretty neked.”
Smoke’s grin was ugly. “I’m glad you think so, Felter — ’cause you’ll never see another woman.”
Felter flushed. Damn the man’s eyes! he thought. I can’t make him mad. “You ready, Smoke?”
“Any time.”
Felter braced himself. “Now!”
The air blurred in front of Felter, then filled with the thunderous roar of gunfire and black smoke. The bounty hunter was on his feet, but something was very wrong. There was something pressing against his back. He felt with his hands. A hitch-rail.
Empty hands! Empty?
My hands can’t be empty, he thought. “What …?” he managed to say. Then the shock of his wounds hit him hard.
Why … I didn’t even clear leather, he thought. The damn kid pulled a cross-draw and beat me! Me!
Felter steadied his eyes to see if he could be wrong. Smoke’s left hand holster was empty. He watched the kid shove the .44 back into leather.
“No way!” Felter said. He reached for his Colt and lifted it. His movements seemed so slow. He jacked back the hammer and something blurred in front of him.
Then the sound reached his ears and the fury of the slug in his stomach brought a scream from his lips. Felter again lifted his Colt and a booming blow struck him on the breastbone, somersaulting him over the hitch-rail, to land on his backside under the striped pole of a tent barber shop.
But Felter was a tough, barrel-chested man, and would not die easily. Unable to rise, he struggled to pull his left-hand Colt. He managed to get the pistol up, hammer back, and pointed. Then Smoke’s .44 roared one more time, the slug hitting Felter in the jaw, taking off most of the outlaw’s face. The slug whined off bone and hit the striped barber pole, spinning it.
The street was quiet. The battle was over.
The barber pole squeaked and turned, then was silent.
Smoke sank to his knees in the dirt.
“You hard hit, son,” a miner told him. Unnecessary information, for Smoke knew he was hurt. “You can’t just ride out bleedin’ like that.”
Smoke swung into the saddle, gathering the reins in his left hand, the pack horse rope in his right. “I’ll be all right.”
He had cleaned his wounds in town, now he wanted the high country, where he would make poultices of herbs and wildflowers, as Preacher had taught him.
The mountain man’s words returned to him. “Nature’s way is the best, son. You let old Mother Nature take care of you. They’s a whole medicine chest right out there in that field. All a man’s gotta do is learn ’em.”
“When you boys plant them,” Smoke told the crowd, “put on their headboards that Smoke Jensen was right and they were wrong.”
He rode off to the west.
“Boys,” a miner said. “We just seen us a livin’ legend. You remember his name, ’cause we all gonna be hearin’ a lot more about that young feller.”
EPILOGUE
For a month Smoke tended to his wounds and rested at his camp on the banks of the San Miguel, on the west side of the Uncompahgre Forest. He rested and treated his wounds with poultices.
He ate well of venison, fished in the river, and made stews of wild potatoes and onions and rabbit and squirrel. He slept twelve to fifteen hours a day, feeling his strength slowly returning to him. And he dreamed his dreams of Nicole, her soft arms soothing him, melting away the hurt and fever, calming his sleep, loving him back to health.
At the beginning of the fifth week, he knew he was ready to ride, ready to move, and he carefully checked his guns, cleaning them, rubbing oil into the pockets of his holsters, until the deadly .44s fitted in and out smoothly.
Then he packed his gear and rode out.
In the southwestern corner of Wyoming, a wanted poster tacked to a tree brought him up short.
WANTED
DEAD OR ALIVE
THE OUTLAW AND MURDERER
SMOKE JENSEN
$10,000.00 REWARD
Contact the Sheriff at Bury, Idaho Territory
Smoke removed the wanted flyer and carefully folded it, tucking it in his pocket. He looked up to watch an eagle soar high above him, gliding majestically northwestward.
“Take a message with you, eagle, “ Smoke said. “Tell Potter and Richards and Stratton and all their gun-hands I’m coming to kill them. For my Pa, for Preacher, for my son, and for making me an outlaw. And they’ll die just as hard as Nicole did. You tell them, eagle. I’m coming after them. “
The eagle dipped its wings and flew on.
Table of Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Epilogue
FB2 document info
Document ID: 83950c82-4517-49ab-9117-73881ae70f42
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 24.4.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.48 software
Document authors :
Johnstone, William W.
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Johnstone, William W., Last Mountain Man
Last Mountain Man Page 16