Terror of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “I had only nine killed, not fifteen,” Chavez said.

  “I am talking about every man Jensen has killed. First the three men we sent for supplies, then the three men who were killed with Vargas, and the nine men who you let be killed. I made you and Vargas lieutenants, because I thought I could depend on you. But Vargas failed me, and so have you! You are no longer a lieutenant, and neither is Vargas.”

  “Coronel, you do not understand,” Chavez said. “This man Jensen is a devil.”

  “Diablo, is he?”

  “Sí. He is a devil, and those with him are angels from hell.”

  “El diablo y sus ángeles. That is how we will speak of him now. The devil and his angels,” Keno said.

  Cruillas

  Three days after the confrontation between El diablo y sus ángeles and the Ejército Mexicano de la Liberación, Ygnacio Pena was having a drink in the cantina when he saw Uvo Ramos coming through the front door. Ramos was Keno’s second-in-command, and Pena was surprised to see him here.

  What was Ramos doing here? Recalling his last meeting with Keno, Pena felt a sense of fear. Had Ramos come to kill him?

  “Tequila, señor,” Ramos said to the bartender.

  After getting his drink, Ramos brought it over to Pena’s table, where he sat without being invited.

  “Why are you here, Ramos?” Pena said. “You have taken a big chance by coming to Cruillas.”

  “I think not much of a chance, Pena,” Ramos replied. He took a drink of his tequila before speaking again. “You are the only person in this village who can recognize me. You are not going to give me away, are you?”

  The comment was more of a veiled warning than a question.

  “No! No, señor, I will say nothing.”

  Ramos reached into his pocket, then pulled out some money.

  “Here is three hundred pesos,” he said. He put it on the table, then pushed it across to Pena. “It is for you.”

  Pena’s face lit up in a broad smile. “For me? But why? I do not understand.”

  “Coronel regrets the unpleasant thing that happened when last you visited us. He wants to make amends, and wishes to buy our help in our war with El diablo y sus ángeles.”

  “The devil and his angels?”

  “Jensen.”

  “But, how can I help?”

  “We have heard that they are staying here, in this village. Is that true?”

  “Sí, it is true.”

  “Where does he stay?”

  “He has a house on Calle San Gabriel.”

  “Is it a big house?”

  “No, señor, it is a very small house.”

  Ramos smiled. “That is good. It will make it very easy to kill him.”

  Pena shook his head. “I think Jensen will not be a man who can be killed, easily.”

  “Tonight at midnight, be in the plaza. I will have three men with me. You can lead us to the house where Jensen is sleeping. I think five men can kill one man, even if that man is the devil, if we shoot him while he is sleeping.”

  “You said you will have three men with you. That makes four men, not five. I will lead you to the house where Jensen is, but I will not help you try to kill him.”

  “Are you afraid of Jensen?”

  “Sí.”

  “Do not be afraid. I won’t need you. It will be easy for four men to kill one man, as he is sleeping.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Pena stood in the dark shadows, next to the well in the town plaza. The town clock had struck twelve a few minutes earlier, but as yet, neither Ramos, nor any other of Keno’s men, had shown themselves. He was about to leave when he heard the sound of approaching horses. Pena stared toward the sound until four men materialized from the darkness.

  “Ramos, I am here,” Pena called out, quietly.

  The four riders came toward him, then they dismounted.

  “Are you ready to help us?” Ramos asked.

  “Sí.”

  “We will leave the horses here,” Ramos said to the others, and as he tied his horse to a hitching rail in the plaza, the others followed suit.

  “Now,” Ramos said, his pistol in his hand. “Take us to the house of Jensen.”

  “It is this way,” Pena said. “I have a key,” he added, holding up a small piece of brass that gleamed softly in the moonlight.

  “How did you get a key?” Ramos asked.

  “It is a llave maestra,” Pena said proudly. “It will open any door.”

  “Good. Let us go.”

  Pena led them down Absolo Street to San Gabriel Street. He pointed to two small houses that sat side by side. “That one,” he said, pointing to the house in the right, “that is the house of Smoke Jensen.”

  As he took a step to improve his position, he stepped on a stick, which cracked loudly.

  “Be silent!” Ramos ordered.

  “Sí,” Pena whispered in reply.

  Pena handed the skeleton key to Ramos, then, as Ramos and the others started toward the house, Pena began backing away in the opposite direction.

  Something awakened Smoke. He didn’t know if it was a dream or a sound he heard. He just knew that he was lying in bed, feeling a strange sense of disquiet. His gun belt was hanging from the headboard of the bed, and he reached up to pull the pistol from its holster.

  He still didn’t know what had awakened him, nor could he point to the source of his apprehension. Nevertheless, he had learned over the years to trust these intuitions. His life had been saved almost as many times by this sixth sense he had developed, as it had been by his skill with guns. At this moment he and Sally were in danger. From what or whom, he didn’t know, but he knew that the danger was real.

  “Sally,” he said, speaking quietly, but just loud enough to penetrate Sally’s sleep.

  “What?” she asked, groggily.

  “Get out of bed, now. Move to that corner.”

  Smoke’s voice was quiet, but emphatic, and Sally had learned, long ago, not to question him when he spoke in such a way.

  “Take your gun.”

  As Smoke had done a moment earlier, Sally extracted her pistol, then she and Smoke stepped into the shadows of the front corner of the little house.

  The door opened quietly, and only the spill of moonlight into the room gave away the fact that it had opened at all.

  Sally reached out to put her hand on Smoke’s arm.

  Four men came in through the door and stepped toward the foot of the bed. It was then, in the dim silver glow, that they could see the bed was empty.

  “Qué?” one of the men asked in surprise.

  “Are you men looking for us?” Smoke asked. As he asked the question he pushed Sally gently, but forcefully enough for her to move out of the corner. He stepped in the other direction, just as the four men started shooting toward where Smoke and Sally had been but an instant earlier.

  The room exploded in noise, and was lit by a series of bright gun flashes, not only from the guns of the four would-be assassins, but from Smoke’s and Sally’s as well. Then the shooting stopped.

  “Sally?” Smoke asked anxiously.

  “I’m all right,” Sally replied. “You?”

  “I wasn’t hit.”

  By now noises were coming from outside, dogs barking, men shouting, and babies crying.

  “Stay where you are,” Smoke said, and he moved across the dark room until he encountered the first body on the floor. He nudged the body with his foot, but got no reaction. Then he stepped over to the bedside table, lit the kerosene lamp, and turned it up. In the light that filled the room, he could see all four intruders lying on the floor.

  “Smoke! Smoke! Miss Sally! Are you all right?”

  The anxious call came from Pearlie as he, Cal, and Old Mo, with guns drawn, came into the room from their house next door.

  “You boys are a little late for the party,” Smoke said.

  Captain Juan Cortina of the Mexican Federales arrived in Cruillas two days after the shoot-out i
n Smoke’s house. The four men Smoke and Sally had shot were laid out in one of the cells in the jail. Sheriff Rivas had held them there until Cortina arrived, and now Cortina stood there looking down at them.

  “I know two of them,” he said. “This is Uvo Ramos, and this is Urbano Jimenez.”

  “The other two are Tobais Luna, and Stefan Dominguez,” Sheriff Rivas said.

  “They are all Keno’s men, aren’t they?” Cortina asked.

  “Sí.” He pointed to Ramos. “I think Ramos was Keno’s deputy.”

  “And Jensen killed all four of them?”

  “Sí.”

  “Murder?”

  “No, Capitán. The four men went into his house in the middle of the night and tried to kill Jensen, but he killed them instead.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “It is what I was told by Señor Jensen.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Sí. I went to the house, and I saw all four of them. They all had guns in their hands, and the guns had been fired. You could still smell the gunpowder.”

  “I think maybe the time has come for me to speak with Señor Jensen.”

  “I will bring him to you,” Rivas offered.

  The involvement of the law in the shooting that took place in the middle of the night neither surprised nor bothered Smoke. He wasn’t surprised, because he had personally gone to fetch the sheriff immediately after the shooting happened. And he wasn’t bothered by it because he knew that the shooting had been a case of self-defense, and he was in the right.

  It was with that same frame of mind that he met Juan Cortina.

  Cortina’s first question did catch him by surprise, though.

  “How many of Keno’s men have you killed, Señor Jensen?”

  “Are these four men Keno’s men?”

  “Of course they are. Señor Jensen, you are not going to try and tell me you didn’t know they were Keno’s men, are you?”

  “The truth is, Captain, the subject never came up. One minute my wife and I were sleeping, and the next minute these four men were in our house, shooting at us.”

  “How is it that you were in your bed, and yet neither you nor Señora Jensen were struck by bullets?”

  “Because we weren’t in our bed when the shooting started.” Smoke described the incident in detail to the Federale officer, including in the telling that something, perhaps a sound, had awakened him.

  “Why do you think they came to kill you?” Cortina asked.

  “If these four men were Keno’s men, and I’ve no reason to doubt it, I suppose Keno sent them to kill me.”

  “Does Keno have reason to kill you?”

  Smoke nodded. “You might say so.”

  “Señor Jensen, have you come to Mexico to hunt down Keno?”

  “Yes,” Smoke answered bluntly.

  “You do understand, do you not, señor, that American authorities have no jurisdiction in our country?”

  “I do not represent American authority.”

  “Oh? I have been told, señor, that you are a deputy U.S. marshal. Is this not true?”

  “I am a deputy U.S. marshal, but I am not here in that capacity. I am here on my own. Keno came into Texas and killed many men and women. He also stole two hundred of my horses. I am here to recover my horses.”

  “And to kill Keno?” Cortina held up a copy of the note Smoke had sent to Keno, then he began to read.

  “‘Keno. I am coming after you. You will not escape. We will kill you to avenge the people you killed in Texas. I am Smoke Jensen, and I am an American avenger.’”

  Cortina looked up at Smoke. “Did you write that note, señor?”

  “I did.”

  “And so I ask you again. How many of Keno’s men have you killed, since you came into our country?”

  “I don’t know,” Smoke said, truthfully. He had no idea how many they had killed at the encounter in the canyon.

  “I know that you have killed at least seven. The four men who came into your house, and the three men who tried to rob you. I don’t know if you have killed any more than that or not. But, señor, this killing has to stop.”

  “Captain Cortina, the seven men you mentioned tried to kill me. I was acting in self-defense and, even here, in this country, a person has the right to defend his own life if it is threatened. Isn’t that true?”

  “Sí.”

  “Like I said, Captain, I’m here to recover my horses. I’m sure that after Keno went to all that trouble to steal them . . . he’s not going to want to give them back. And I’m equally sure that he will try and kill me to keep me from getting them. If I kill him while he is trying to kill me, that too will be self-defense, will it not?”

  “Regardless of the law, you are very foolish to go after him. He is said to have as many as one hundred men.”

  “He doesn’t have that many,” Smoke said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Like you said, Captain. I’ve already killed seven of them.”

  “Ramos is dead?” Keno asked Pena, who had returned to the place where Keno and his men were camped out.

  “Sí. And so are the others who were with him.”

  “How can this be? Did he not go into the house in the middle of the night?”

  “Sí, I gave him a key so he could sneak in quietly. I don’t know how Jensen knew they were there.”

  Pena believed that Jensen may have been warned of their presence by the sound of the stick he had broken, but he wasn’t about to tell Keno that. And, because the others were dead, there would be no way Keno could ever find out that he might have been the cause of the failure of their mission.

  “I am beginning to think that perhaps Jensen really is a devil, who cannot be killed.”

  “He can be killed, Coronel,” Pena said.

  “Oh? Are you telling me, Pena, that you can kill him?”

  “If you are willing to pay enough money to have him killed, I will see that he is killed.”

  Keno laughed. “Pena, there is not one man in my army who could not kill you. But you tell me that you can kill Jensen.”

  “No, Coronel, I can’t kill him, but I can arrange for him to be killed.”

  “How?”

  “He is an American gunfighter?”

  “Sí.”

  Pena smiled. “Then I will get a pistolero americano to kill a pistolero americano.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  There was an American man named Lou Tucker who lived in Cruillas. Tucker worked for the blacksmith. He didn’t have the skills of a blacksmith, his work consisted of getting the fire started, cleaning up the shop, moving iron around, and other such jobs as the blacksmith might require.

  Tucker had come to Mexico to run away from the law in America, and he was the one Pena went to in order to set up the deal he had proposed to Keno. He explained what he wanted, and Tucker shook his head.

  “There is no gunfighter in America who can beat Smoke Jensen. Maybe you haven’t heard of what happened, just a few weeks ago, between Jensen and a man named Rick Isback.”

  “No, I have not heard.”

  “Isback was fast. He was very fast, some said he was faster than Jensen. I reckon Isback began believing that his ownself, ’cause he come to San Vicente for no reason in the world, other than to face down Jensen.”

  “What happened?”

  “Like I said, Isback was fast. Only he warn’t fast enough. Jensen kilt ’im.”

  Pena shook his head. “Then you know of no American who can kill Jensen?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said there was nobody who could beat him. That ain’t the same thing as sayin’ there ain’t nobody that can kill ’im. For that, all you need is someone who is willin’ to do it. And I know who that is, if you’re willin’ to pay him enough.”

  “Who would that be, señor?”

  “That would be a feller by the name of Rex Kennedy.”

  “How much money do you think he will want to do the job?” Pena as
ked.

  “He will want at least five hundred dollars. And maybe another two hundred and fifty to kill the people who are with Jensen.”

  “Do you think Señor Kennedy is good enough to do this?”

  Tucker laughed. “Good don’t have nothin’ to do with it. What you want is someone who’s mean enough to do the job. You need someone who won’t give a second thought to waitin’ behind the corner of a buildin’, then steppin’ up behind a fella with a shotgun, and blowin’ his head off. And if that’s what you want, then Rex Kennedy is your man.”

  “What I want is Jensen dead.”

  “Oh, he’ll be dead all right.”

  “Do you know this hombre? Do you know Rex Kennedy?”

  “Yeah, I know ’im. I rode with ’im some down in San Saba County back a couple of years ago.”

  “Will you take me to him?”

  “Yeah, I’ll take you to him. But it’s goin’ to cost you five hundred pesos.”

  “Five hundred pesos? I don’t have five hundred pesos.”

  “You don’t have five hundred dollars either, but I told you it was goin’ to cost you that much to hire Kennedy, ’n’ you didn’t blink none. So I figure you’re settin’ this up for someone else. And if you can get five hundred, or maybe even seven hundred and fifty dollars to get the job done, why, I reckon that person would be willin’ to give you five hundred pesos to pay me to take you to him. ’Cause I’m tellin’ you right now, without me to introduce you, he ain’t goin’ to talk to no Mex. And, by the way, just so that you know, Rex Kennedy ain’t the kind of man you want to be messin’ around with,” Tucker warned. “So when he tells you how much money he wants to do the job, either tell ’im you’ll pay ’im that much, or else thank him, then turn around and walk away. Don’t try ’n’ bargain with ’im.”

  “It is going to cost you one thousand dollars American to have Jensen killed,” Pena said. “And I am told that the man we must hire will not negotiate.”

  “Who is this man?” Keno asked.

  “Like Jensen, he is a gringo. His name is Rex Kennedy.”

  “And this man, Rex Kennedy, is a better pistolero than Diablo Jensen?”