Terror of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Miguel spoke more softly. “I know you have done much, my daughter. I don’t know what we would do without you.” He smiled. “And if the boys don’t think you are pretty, they are muy loco, because I think you are muy hermosa.”

  One mile from the small, crowded house of Miguel Salinas, T. B. Keno sat at a table in a cantina, listening to a report from Ramos, one of his men.

  “We have the horses in a dead-end canyon in the Sierra Veinte Casas mountains,” he said. “We can make our camp there. There is a cabin near to the place that you can use for your headquarters.”

  “Is the cabin empty?”

  “No, Coronel, it is occupied by a gringo prospector.”

  “One man?”

  “Sí.”

  “He will be no problem. Have you found a buyer for the horses?

  “Sí. I have found someone who will give us fifty pesos for each horse. He will sell them to the army.”

  “Sí, and he will get one hundred pesos for each horse,” Keno said with irritation in his voice.

  “But we cannot sell them to the army,” Ramos said. “Already newspapers have carried stories of our raid into Texas.”

  “I know. When will he take the horses?”

  “He will take them anytime we deliver them.”

  “We will leave here and go to the place you have found in the mountains,” Keno said.

  “Sí, but before we can do that, we must gather food,” Ramos said.

  “I am sure the people of Nuevo Pacifico will be more than generous,” Keno suggested. “Send a messenger to every hacienda, every casa, and every cabaña. Tell the people that they must bring food to town within two days. Corn, flour, beans, sugar, coffee, beef, bacon, and chickens.”

  “How much shall each give, Coronel?”

  “Each citizen shall bring five pounds of corn, flour, beans, sugar, and coffee. But they shall only be taxed for one of the meat, either five pounds of beef, or five pounds of bacon, or five chickens.”

  “I think they will be happy to do this,” Ramos said.

  Miguel was feeding the chickens when two riders came onto his small farm. Both men were wearing bullet-filled bandoliers and carrying rifles. They weren’t in any kind of uniform, because, except for Keno himself, his “army” didn’t wear uniforms.

  The men didn’t have to be wearing uniforms. Miguel recognized them at once for who they were, and he felt a lightness in his head, and a constriction in his stomach. He had no idea what they wanted, but it couldn’t be good. It was never good to be visited by Keno’s “soldiers.”

  “You are Miguel Salinas?” one of the men asked.

  “Sí, señor.”

  “I see that you have many chickens. Have you pigs as well?”

  “No, señor. I have only chickens.”

  “But I see that you have a garden. What is in your garden?”

  “It is the end of summer, señor, there is nothing left in my garden.”

  “You have saved nothing from your garden? Do you not have a family?”

  “Sí. I have a wife and four children.”

  “What kind of father would not save vegetables from his garden for his family?”

  “I have saved some vegetables,” Miguel said. He didn’t like where this conversation was going.

  “Bring five live chickens to the cantina.”

  “What? But that is one-third of all the chickens I have. Why should I do that?”

  “It is a tax, señor.”

  “But I cannot afford that. I have a family to feed.”

  “You have one week, señor.”

  The two soldiers turned, and rode away.

  The Wide Loop

  “I stopped by the telegraph office when I was in town, and had him write down the Morse code for me. I had Sally make a copy for each one of us. I think if we practice on this for a few days, we can learn it well enough to use it . . . at least for our purposes. And that’s what we’re going to do,” Smoke said, as he handed out the mirrors.

  “Smoke, before we start learnin’ any kind of a code, maybe we ought to learn how to use these things,” Pearlie said. “I mean, if the sun is behind you, why, you can’t use it at all, can you?”

  “From midmorning till midafternoon, the sun will be high enough that it won’t matter where it is,” Smoke said. “Here’s how you catch it.”

  Smoke picked up the mirror to demonstrate, as he explained the use to them.

  “The first thing you do is grip the mirror edges with your fingertips. Don’t let any of your hand get out over the front of the mirror, ’cause if you do, it could partially block the surface. Now, let me see all of you hold it.”

  The other four gripped the mirrors with varying degrees of correctness. Sally was the most accurate.

  “Sally, help them out there,” Smoke said.

  Once he was satisfied that everyone was holding the mirror properly, Smoke proceeded to the second step.

  “Hold out your other hand in front of you, then pick up the sun’s reflection and put the spot on that hand. Once you’ve got the spot on that hand, sort of lift the hand, keeping the sun spot on it, until that hand is lined up with your target. One you’ve got that hand lined up with your target, drop it, and the sun spot will go exactly where you want it. Do that, and we’ll be able to keep in touch with each other from a mile away.”

  The others began experimenting with finding the sun, and the spot.

  “Look over there,” Smoke said. “The side of that barn is dark. You should be able to see the spot once you put it there. One at a time now, let me see you put the spot just below the window.

  “All right, now once you have your target picked out, all you have to do is send dashes and dots, just like with a telegraph. And you can do that by holding your hand over the mirror like this”—Smoke demonstrated—“and this lets you control the length of your signal. Do it quickly and it is a dot. Let the light linger, and it is a dash. Cal, this is your name. Watch as I do it, and I will say it to you. C is dash dot dash dot. A is dot dash. And L is dot dash dot dot. See if you can do it.”

  Cal sent his name, making the spots appear on the dark barn.

  “Ha!” he said. “If anybody happened to see that, and could read Morse code, they would know it’s me.”

  “Easy for you,” Pearlie said. “You just have three letters in your name.”

  “All of us are going to have just three letters, except Mo. He’ll have only two. You’ll be PEA, which is dot dash dash dot, which is P, a dot by itself is E, and dot dash for A. Now, you send your name.”

  With the charts before them the first thing they learned was how to do their own names, then they learned a few simple phrases such as: all clear which they sent as AL CLR; many men, as MNY MN; come in, CM IN; I’m coming, IM CMG; and WT, which meant wait. They also learned how to send look north, look south, look east, look west, in abbreviated terms. They also learned how to say “understood,” which they sent as UD. That was quick and simple to learn as the letters U and D were just the opposite of each other, dot dot dash for U and dash dot dot for D.

  All the abbreviated phrases were written out on a tablet which each of them had, and they practiced for the next two days until they were beginning to get quite proficient at it.

  “What if we have to send something we haven’t learned?” Sally asked.

  “Good question. Do you have a suggestion?”

  “I do. We’ll send the word “new.” That will mean that whoever is sending the message is going to have to use the guide to send it, and whoever is receiving it will just mark it down on the paper as dots and dashes, then, we can used the guide to decipher it.”

  Smoke laughed. “Good idea,” he said. “It wouldn’t exactly work for a telegrapher to warn a train that the bridge is out in front of them, but it’ll do for our purposes. Suppose you send a message like that, and let us decipher it.”

  Sally smiled, and taking the code sheet and the mirror with her, walked all the way back to the porch o
f the Big House. Once there she started sending the message, while Smoke and the others recorded it, only by the dots and dashes.

  Pearlie was the first to decipher the series of flashes emanating from Sally’s mirror.

  “Ha!” Pearlie said. “She is saying ‘Come for lunch.’”

  “Easy enough for you to decipher,” Old Mo teased. “You’ve been ready for lunch ever since I’ve known you.”

  “Do you think she really means that?” Cal asked.

  “Why not?” Smoke replied. “It’s time for lunch.”

  “Smoke, are you sure you want to go after Keno?” Hardegree asked later that afternoon.

  “Yes, I’m sure. Why do you ask?”

  “I just found out that he has Gatling guns. That’s how he was able to shoot up the town the way he did.”

  “Does he have artillery?” Smoke asked.

  “Artillery? No, I don’t think so.”

  “We do.”

  “You have a cannon?” Hardegree asked, surprised by the response.

  “Not exactly. But we do have Mo.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mo,” Smoke called. “Show Hardegree one of the arrows you’ve been working on.”

  With a smile, Old Mo held up an arrow. Tied to the arrow was a stick of dynamite, and glued to the dynamite were several nails.

  “Whoa!” Hardegree said with a laugh. “I reckon you do have artillery at that.”

  The next day, as the others were practicing signaling with their mirrors, Smoke happened to see a brown lizard crawling through the dirt. When the lizard crawled into a clump of grass, it turned green.

  Smoke smiled.

  “Folks, I’m going to buy all of you a new pair of jeans and a new shirt,” he said.

  “What? Why?” Pearlie asked.

  “Because we’re all about to become lizards.”

  “Smoke, what are you talking about?” Sally asked, as confused as the others by his strange comments.

  “You ever notice how a lizard looks just like the land where he is? That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to be going through mostly brown and tan dirt, and the reason I’ll be buying you some new clothes is because we’re going to dye one our outfits the color of sand.”

  “How?” Cal asked.

  “With butternut dye.” Smoke smiled. “Everyone likes to think that the Confederate army wore gray, and I guess the officers, and some of the sponsored regiments did. But a lot of the Confederate soldiers, if not most of them, wore butternut tan. And butternut dye is easy to make. All we need are about fifty walnuts, in their shells.”

  Smoke supervised the making of the dye, first by cracking open the walnuts, removing the nut meat, then crushing the shells.

  “What do we do with the walnuts?” Cal asked.

  Smoke popped a walnut into his mouth, and grinned. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to eat them.”

  When all the walnuts were cracked, and all the shells crushed down, they were put into a pot and boiled.

  Before nightfall of the second evening, Sally made one more check of the five sand-colored pants, and five similarly colored shirts she had hung out after removing them from the dye pot. They were all dry, and ready to be worn the next day.

  “Sally, I’ve been having second thoughts about this,” Smoke said as they lay in bed that night.

  “You mean about us going?”

  “No, I mean about you going.”

  “If you’re going, I’m going,” Sally said, resolutely.

  “I’d rather you not.”

  “Kirby Jensen, you’re not going to keep me out of this,” Sally said.

  “Kirby, is it? You call me Kirby instead of Smoke?” Smoke teased.

  “Yes, if you’re going to be like this. Please, Smoke, don’t leave me behind. We’ve been in some tight spots before, you know that.”

  “Never like this. Sally, we are going up against an army. An entire army. And there are only five of us.”

  “Yes, five, and you want to cut it down to four, to decrease your strength by twenty percent before we even start. Why would you want to do such a foolish thing?”

  “Sally, if something happened to you, I’d be . . .”

  “No more than I would be if something happened to you,” Sally said, interrupting him in mid-sentence. “Smoke, wouldn’t we both be better off knowing what was going on? At least if we are together, there’s none of the anxiousness.”

  Smoke chuckled. “Sally, if we’re married for seventy-five years, I might win an argument with you someday. You win.”

  “Oh, but, darling, I don’t like to think of it as I won. I prefer to think that you simply see that I’m right.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Nuevo Pacifico

  For the entire week, the villagers had been bringing in food to supply Keno and his men. They stood in lines, holding live chickens, rabbits, some even had pigs. All had fruit and vegetables, as well as flour and cornmeal.

  Miguel Salinas was one of the peasant farmers standing in line. He was holding two live chickens by their legs, the chickens long ago having grown too tired to continue to resist. Miguel had been told that he must give five chickens, and his wife, Eva, was frightened that he would be punished for not bringing his quota.

  “I will have my whole family with me,” Miguel said. “When Coronel Keno sees how many I must feed, he will have compassion, and he will accept the two chickens. You will see.”

  As he had said he would, Miguel Salinas took his entire family with him, including his thirteen-year-old daughter, Rosita.

  “You! Come!” one of the guards shouted to Miguel and his family who, after a long and tiring wait, were finally next in line to approach the table where sat T. B. Keno.

  “Two chickens?” Keno said when Miguel made his offering. “Two chickens is all you bring to feed the army of revolution, the army that is fighting for your rights. That is not enough. You must give us at least three more chickens.”

  “Please, señor Coronel,” Miguel said. “You can see that my family is here. I have four children. I cannot feed them all if I give you what you ask for.”

  Keno lifted his pistol and cocked it. “That is not a problem, señor,” he said easily. “I will kill one of your children, then you won’t have so many to feed.” He smiled, a twisted, evil smile. “And I will let you choose which of your children you want me to kill. I am sure that there is at least one who is a troublemaker.”

  “Papa!” the children called as one.

  “No! No!” Miguel shouted, holding out his hand. “Wait, please wait! I will give you three more chickens. I beg of you, do not hurt any of my children.”

  “You,” Keno said, pointing to Rosita. “You must stay with me until your papa returns with the other three chickens.”

  “Papa, no!” the young girl cried out in terror.

  “Do not worry, Rosita. I will be back with the other chickens, and soon,” Miguel promised.

  As he had promised, Miguel returned within the hour with three more chickens. He handed them to one of Keno’s men.

  “Here are the three chickens you asked for, Coronel. Now, please, may I have my daughter back?”

  “It is too late,” Keno said. “You should have brought the five chickens when you were told to do so. Now, you must be punished. And to punish you, I will keep your daughter with me.”

  “If you must punish me, then do so,” Miguel said in an anguished voice. “But, Coronel, please, punish me, not my daughter. I am the one who offended you. Please let my daughter go, so that she can return to her mother.”

  Keno smiled, an evil smile, and shook his head. “No. I think if I keep the girl, it will be more punishment for you than anything else I might do. Besides, do you not have three other children? I am a compassionate man, señor. I will not take you from your children, I will take only your daughter from you.”

  “Please, Coronel, I beg of you. Let my daughter go!” Miguel got down on his knees, and
put his hands together as if praying.

  “Get him out of here,” Keno said, gruffly. “What kind of man would grovel so?”

  Rosita had watched the whole thing, and when she saw her father sink to his knees to beg, she wanted to cry out, but there was such a restriction in her throat that she could make no sound. She was both hurt and embarrassed for her father, and she felt a sense of shame, as if by being Keno’s prisoner, she was the cause of all this.

  After her father was taken to the front door and brutally thrown out into the street, Rosita turned to her captor.

  “What is to become of me now?” she asked. The tone of her voice was exceptionally calm, so calm that it surprised Keno.

  “Are you frightened, little one?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet, your words do not betray your fear. Why is that?”

  “If I cried, would you let me go?” Rosita asked.

  “No. Even if you cried, I would not let you go.”

  “Then why should I cry?”

  “Listen to the girl,” he said to the others. “She is much braver than her father.”

  “What is to become of me now?” Rosita repeated.

  Keno stepped over to her, and ran his finger over the smooth skin of her cheek. The feel of his finger on her skin was repugnant to her, but she showed no reaction.

  “Do not worry, my pretty little one. I will find some way for you to be useful to me.”

  “Coronel, we have gathered all our supplies,” Vargas said.

  “Very well. Call in all the men and we will leave,” Keno replied.

  Keno and the others left the village a short while later, but before they did so, Rosita’s hands were tied and she was put up on a horse. Although she had ridden on the back of a donkey before, this was the first time in her life she had ever been on a horse, and as they rode out of town, one of the soldiers held on to a rope that was tied to the harness of her horse.

  They rode for several hours until they reached the mountains, then they started through a canyon which was narrow enough that the clatter of the horses’ hooves on the rocky floor echoed loudly back from the bracketing walls. Just before nightfall they reached a cabin, and here, they stopped. As they approached the cabin, Rosita thought that it must belong to Keno, but when they stopped, an old man, with white hair and beard, came out.