Long gaps in the trouser legs showed equally white human legs beneath, albeit stout as beer kegs. They did not remain so for long. By the time Smoke Jensen had cut the cloth away at mid-thigh, in the manner sometimes worn by small boys, those legs had become rivers of blood. This would be one beating Smoke determined the man would never forget. Fowler went to his knees, howled pitifully, then finally cringed into a whimpering mass of cut and bleeding flesh. Smoke Jensen relented.
Stalking over to the badly mauled teamster, Smoke tossed the bloody whip into the wagon box and stared down at the product of his efforts. “Tell me,” he asked politely, “did you enjoy feeling like your mules must have?” Then he turned away, remounted Thunder and rode off down the street.
Smoke Jensen tied off Thunder outside the telegraph office at the railroad depot in Big Rock. His boots rang on the thick two by six planks of the platform as he crossed to the door. Inside, the telegrapher sat in his bay window that overlooked the tracks. Coatless, he had sleeve garters to hold up the long sleeves of his light blue shirt with the white vertical pinstripes. Three cigars protruded from the upper pocket of his vest. A green eyeshade obscured his face. He looked up as Smoke approached the counter.
“Afternoon, Mr. Jensen. What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to send a telegraph message.”
Rising from his chair, the telegrapher came to the counter. “Do you have it written out?”
“No. I’ll do that now.”
An octagonal-faced Regulator clock ticked out the seconds while Smoke wrote his query on the yellow form. It was clear, concise, and direct. He hoped the answer would be the same, and come quickly. When he finished, he handed the missive over to the telegraph operator, who glanced at it and raised an eyebrow.
“You—ah—expecting company, Mr. Jensen?”
He remembered when the famous Smoke Jensen and Monte Carson had stood back to back and battled a nest of outlaws in the streets of Big Rock. They had cut them down mercilessly and driven the remainder out of town. The village had been right tame since then.
“I don’t think so. And, I’m going to do my best to see nothing unusual happens.”
Relief flooded the face of the railroad employee. He counted the number of words. “That’ll be two and a quarter. I’ll get this out right away. If a reply comes in soon, where can I reach you?”
“I’ll be over at Monte’s office.” Smoke paid him and left.
Back astride Thunder, Smoke ambled along the main street to the low, stone building next to the town hall. He looped the reins over the tie-rail and gained the stoop. Inside the stout, thick door, Monte Carson sat at his desk, a report form from the night man in one hand, a steaming cup of coffee in the other. He glanced up as Smoke entered.
“Didn’t take you long to decide to look into that a little more, did it?”
“No, Monte. It just sat in my head and gnawed until I had to find out all I could.”
“Pour yerself some java. Herkimer just got in some fresh beans over at the Mercantile.” Then he noticed the disarray of Smoke’s shirt. “What did you get into?”
Smoke snorted and tugged at his shirttail. While he poured, he told Monte about the stranger and his mules. Monte listened, nodded at the proper spots, and then rendered his judgment. “It’s a wonder the feller didn’t get himself a sudden case of the deads.”
“If he had pulled a gun, instead of that knife, he would have.”
“That’s cold, Smoke, downright cold,” Monte said with a twinkle in his eyes.
They drank coffee and talked about the latest goings on in Big Rock for a quarter past an hour. Monte was in mid-sentence, telling Smoke about how Bluenosed Bertha, one of the bar girls at the Follies Saloon, had gotten her finger caught in a mousetrap, when the door swung outward.
“What’s this?” the lawman demanded.
In the opening stood a boy of about eleven or twelve. Barefoot, he had a thick thatch of carroty hair above a balloon face of rusty-orange freckles. His unfastened trouser legs ended at mid-calf, which gave him the look of an urchin. “For Mr. Jensen, Sheriff. We got an answer back from the folks out in Arizona Territory.”
Smoke took the folded, yellow form and handed the boy a dime. The lad’s eyes went wide. “Oh, boy! A whole dime. Thank you, Mr Jensen.”
He scampered off down Central Street, no doubt to the general mercantile and those inviting glass jars of horehound drops and rock candy. Smoke opened the message and read from it. His eyebrows rose and he whistled softly at the conclusion. He gestured toward Monte Carson with the sheet of paper.
“They’ve learned a bit more since that first telegram. The warden verified that they killed two guards and seriously injured another in their escape. The search has been fruitless in Mexico. But a hermit, by the name of Hiram Wells, who lived up-river from the prison was found murdered and his horses missing.”
“That fits with what the warden says a trustee told him. Which is that the three of them formed an alliance to get revenge on some unnamed man responsible for them all being in prison. A man who lives somewhere up in the mountain country.”
Monte Carson looked hard at Smoke Jensen. “He didn’t have a name, huh?”
“That’s what it says. Although it doesn’t take a whiz at arithmetic to add up one and one and get two.”
Brow furrowed now in concentration, Monte reached a conclusion. “I think you an’ me, an’ a couple of good deputies had ought to ride up to the Sugarloaf and fort up. That’s what I think.”
Smoke shook his head. “No offense, Monte, but I don’t think that’s such a hot idea. No sense in bringing the fight home with us. In fact, the farther I can keep Spectre, Tinsdale, and Buckner from the Sugarloaf, the happier I will be.”
Genuine concern for his long-time friend colored Monte’s words. “What do you have in mind?”
“I reckon to head into some friendly territory up Wyoming way. Say, maybe Jackson’s Hole. I can settle in, make my presence known, and let the word get out. Then let them come.”
“Think they’ll do it on their own?”
“No, Monte, they’ll bring along help. Spectre used to run a large band of outlaws, numbered around forty. He’s known along the Owl Hoot Trail. If he feels the need, he can get all the men he needs.”
“Why do you single him out as the leader of all this, Smoke?”
“Because I came close to blowing out his brains in the showdown we had. And I killed his only son. But look at it this way. When they come for me, and they will, I’ll have these would-be avengers on ground I am well familiar with and they know little about. That’ll go a long way toward evening the odds.”
Monte could not let it go. “I hope you’re right. I sure’s hell do.”
Hanksville, in Utah, hovered on the edge of Ute country. As yet, the native dwellers of the sparse ground had not been corralled and driven onto a small, unpromising reservation in the southern corner of Colorado. They roamed free. It was doubtful that more than a handful of politicians in Washington knew that they existed. Not until the arid land they occupied offered something of value would they come under the scrutiny of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Hanksville had a white population of fifty-seven and a scattering of Mexican and halfbreed residents. It also served as a transient haven for men on the run.
Victor Spectre came there to recruit more guns for his gang. He had little difficulty in achieving that. Eleven hard cases signed on. Men with shifty eyes and a day or more growth of beard, they found the pay acceptable and the promise of a bonus for killing just a single man satisfying. There were no saloons in Hanksville, so the outlaws drank in their rooms and Victor ordered a quick departure when he had all of the reinforcements he could expect to obtain. So far their travels had paralleled the Colorado River. Here they would make a change.
Five miles outside of town to the east, he halted the growing band and gathered them around. “We’re heading north from here.”
“How far north?” one fellow wi
th an over-fondness for the desert asked with a gimlet eye.
“Quite a ways.”
“Thought you said this feller we’re to kill lives in Colorado?”
“He does, but we’re not going there.”
Upon hearing that, Fin Brock looked hard at Spectre, doubt clear in his narrow face. “Then how are we gonna get him?”
Spectre’s answer was simple enough for anyone. “We make him come to us.”
Farlee Huntoon got in his nickel’s worth. “Easier said than done, I reckon. ’Specially if he finds out how many of us there is.”
Others agreed. Huntoon pushed his luck. “One man alone, he don’t have to come up again’ us, lessen he chooses to.”
Victor Spectre’s voice crackled in reply. “There are ways, Mr. Huntoon, to make a man do anything you want him to. If you weren’t such a dolt, you’d know that.”
“Say what? Was you tryin’ to insult me, Mr. Spectre?”
Victor spoke lightly, his face unreadable and his tone dry. “No, Mr. Huntoon. I was praising the remarkable lack of genius engendered in the terminally inbred.”
“Well—ah—okay, I reckon that’s no insult then. Ain’t often I get praised.”
“No, I expect not.” Spectre turned away.
One of the new men, Judson Reese, better spoken and dressed than the average, touched his hat brim in a sort of salute. “If we cannot have the exact location, can you at least give us a general idea of our destination?”
Spectre beamed at him. “I admire a well-spoken man. Yes, I’ll answer that, since you’ve put it so nicely. In the short term, I feel you men need some recreation. Especially after being in that straight-laced place. We shall pay a visit to the Utes. I hear there is a prosperous trading post not far north of here. Then we will be going on to Wyoming, perhaps even Montana. But, rest assured, wherever we go, Smoke Jensen will come to us.”
Back on the Sugarloaf, Sally Jensen knew something had gone terribly wrong for her husband the moment he rode up the lane to the main house. His usually high, smooth brow wore lines of furrows. He kissed her somewhat absently, then hugged her tightly to his chest as though it would be the last time.
“What is it, Smoke?”
Neither he nor Monte Carson had mentioned the real cause of Monte’s visit to the ranch a week earlier. Now Smoke found himself at a loss as to how to explain. So, he used the time-honored tactic of husbands everywhere. He evaded.
“It’s nothing important. I’ll tell you over supper. And—ah—ask Bobby to take supper with us, too, please.”
That worried Sally even more. Good wife that she was, though, she remained quiet about it. She fixed them a choice rib roast from a steer recently slaughtered out of the small herd kept for that purpose—Smoke would like that—and mounds of mashed potatoes—Bobby would like that—with pan gravy, turnips, and a half gallon, blue Mason jar of wilted lettuce put up last summer. She had already baked a pie.
They ate and Smoke related only the gossip he had picked up in Big Rock that he knew would interest Sally. Then, over a second piece of pie and a cup of coffee, Smoke grudgingly drug out the topic he least wanted to discuss.
“Sally, do you remember when Monte rode out here a while ago?”
“How could I not? It was only last week.”
“What you are not aware of is why he came.” And he went on to give her a highly edited version of the escape and the backgrounds of the men involved. When he had finished, Sally sat with her hands in her lap and stared at the checked tablecloth. At last, she raised her head and spoke somewhat shakily.
“What is it you are going to do?”
Smoke frowned. Now came the hard part. “I am going to be gone for a while. It’s me they want, not you, or the hands, or even Bobby. Odds are they are unaware he exists. I’ll put some distance between us and then let it be known where I am. The word will get to them. They’ll come. And then I will take care of them the way I should have the first time around.”
Sally said it plainly enough that its tone of resignation nearly broke Smoke’s heart. “You’ll kill them.”
“If that’s what it takes.” He broke his hazel gaze from her steady, demanding eyes. “We can hope it ends otherwise.”
Bobby suddenly charged into the conversation. “I want to go with you, Smoke.”
“No. That’s out of the question. I have to do this alone and not endanger anyone else. Monte even offered me deputies and his own help to defend the Sugarloaf. I told him no. My way is the best.”
“I’m big enough,” Bobby protested. “You’ve gotta let me come. I can shoot and I’ve been practicin’ with rifle and six-gun. Ike says I’m a far above average shot, even from horseback. And you taught me how to live in the mountains.”
Smoke needed little effort to sound stern. “Not another word, young man.”
Sally got right to the most painful item. “When?”
“I’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning.”
Tears swam in Sally’s eyes as she cleared the table, and she brushed them away angrily. He was her man and he would do what he thought best. Though if he would listen to anyone, it was she. Sally tried to use that power sparingly. His feelings hurt, Bobby excused himself early to go to the bunkhouse.
That night, laying in bed, Smoke reached out and tenderly took Sally in his arms. She came eagerly and they had a long, tender, passionate parting. The one in the morning would be a facade, a formality for the hands who would witness it.
Pale gray hovered over the eastern ridge as Smoke Jensen came from the kitchen door and took up the reins to his pack horse and Thunder and turned back to the open doorway. Sally hesitated only a second, then lifted her skirt and apron and ran to his embrace. He held her tightly and she did a remarkable job of holding back the tears.
Stuff and nonsense, she thought angrily as she felt the burning behind closed lids. She had seen her man off to danger a hundred times before and not acted so childishly. She pulled back and they kissed hungrily.
“You take care of yourself, Smoke Jensen.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll be sure to do that,” Smoke said with wry humor.
They kissed again and Smoke swung into the saddle. He looked around, wondering why Bobby had not come out to see him off. With a light-hearted wave he parted from his wife and set out down the lane to the main gate of the Sugarloaf. As he neared it, he saw a forlorn figure waiting for him there.
Bobby did not argue or even plead. His looks said it all. His throat worked to fight back the lump, his big, blue eyes pooled with tears. He worked lids rapidly to fight them back, determined not to shed them in a shameful display. After all, if he was going to prove he was big enough to go with Smoke, he had to be too old to cry like a baby. Hope died hard in the breast of a thirteen-year-old. It crashed suddenly and swiftly for Bobby when he heard Smoke’s soft, sincere words.
“No, Bobby, you still can’t go. I’ll see you when this is over.”
Bobby had to force the words past the thickness in his throat. The effort caused his hat to fall from his head and hang by its string. “Wh-When will that be, Smoke?”
“Only the Almighty knows that, son.”
“Then don’t go, Smoke. Please don’t go.”
Smoke Jensen shook his head at the intensity of the boy’s concern. “I have to, Bobby, there is really no other choice. Some day, something will happen in your life and you’ll know for yourself. Now, goodbye.”
Fear clutched Bobby’s heart. “No. Don’t say that. Just say so long.”
Smoke reached out and ruffled Bobby’s snowy hair. “All right. So long, pardner.”
Then he turned Thunder’s head and rode off to the north.
5
Smoke Jensen no sooner got out of the basin that sheltered the Sugarloaf than he discovered that the word had gotten out on the owl hoot telegraph. It came at him in the form of two proddy young gunhands who trotted along the trail toward him. They reined in and touched fingertips to hat brims by way of greet
ing. Then, the one on the right who had carroty hair and buckteeth below pale green eyes the color of arctic ice, spoke with the over-confident sneer of youth.
“You familiar with these parts, old-timer?”
Old-timer? Although there was a touch of gray in his hair, Smoke hardly thought of himself as an old-timer. It brought forth a testy response from him.
“I might be, depends on who’s askin’, sonny-boy.”
Chill eyes flashing, the punk leaned toward Smoke in a threatening manner. “I’m askin’, old man, and you’d best be answerin’, hear?”
There was that word again. Damn! “What is it you’d like to know?”
“We were wonderin’ if you might know where we can find a man we’re lookin’ for.”
Smoke shoved back the brim of his Stetson with his left hand, Thunder’s reins held slackly in the fingers. His right hand rested lightly on his thigh. “It would help if I had a name. There’s not many folks this far from town.”
“Yeah. We done asked at Sulpher Springs. A gent in the saloon said the man we want lived down this way. His name is Smoke Jensen.”
Smoke tensed, but didn’t let it show. “Might I ask what you want with Smoke Jensen?”
That bought him a surly answer. “That’s none of yer business, you old fart.”
That did it! Smoke dropped all pretense at civility. “Well, I just happen to think it is my business, being that I am Smoke Jensen.”
The lout beside the orange-haired one cut his eyes to his partner. “Gol-dang, Lance, what do we do now?”
“Go for it, Lonnie!”
That had to rank as the stupidest mistake Lance had ever made. He had barely closed his fingers around the butt-grip of his Smith .44 American when he looked down the muzzle of the .45 Colt Peacemaker in the hand of Smoke Jensen. His eyes went wide and his mouth formed an “O,” though he yanked iron anyway.
Spirit Of The Mountain Man/ordeal Of The Mountain Man (Pinnacle Westerns) Page 5