Spirit Of The Mountain Man/ordeal Of The Mountain Man (Pinnacle Westerns)

by Johnstone, William W.

  To the west. a flood of gold had spread from north to south, and extended up to the bloated red ball of the sun. Birds called in the distance. His horses grazed on the thick, green shoots and made low, whuffling sounds. A doe and fawn stepped timidly from the tree line and the female turned large, black eyes on the man by the fire. Smoke watched them till they moved out of sight, then ladled up his meal and began to chew in a mood of contentment. The peacefulness lasted through the meal.

  When the last dark, tender flesh of the final quail disappeared down his gullet, Smoke bent to mop up the last of the gravy with a biscuit half when a bullet cracked out of nowhere, slammed into the bottom of the skillet, and ripped it out of his hand. Pain shot up to his shoulder. The sharp report of a rifle quickly followed, accompanied by the detonation of at least two other weapons.

  7

  Another bullet barely missed Smoke’s head and threw a shower of sparks from the fire. A third slug moaned off the rounded surface of a boulder beyond the fire pit. Hand stinging from the impact of the first round, Smoke propelled himself backward and landed on his shoulders. He had his Colt free and it bucked and roared in the direction from which the first shot had come. The hot lead smacked solidly into a tree. A flicker of movement put his second round right on target. A scream answered him.

  Then, “Oh God, Tyrone, he got Billy! Billy’s bleedin’ like a stuck hog!”

  “Shut up, ya idiot! He can find ya from your voice.” Smoke’s next round clipped a small branch from an aspen right over the head of Sayers, who yelped in alarm. “See what I mean?”

  Smoke came to his boots and ran after the second shot, as had his would-be assassins. He dived behind a large boulder and picked his next target from the blunder through the brush. His .45 Peacemaker spat flame. The first, high, hysterical voice shrieked again. “Yiieeee! He got me now.”

  “Shut up, Norvie!”

  Smoke’s keen hearing let him refine his sight picture a little. Norvie Yates did not leave this world with a bang, but rather with a whimper. Shot through the throat at the tender age of eighteen, his last intelligible words were a gurgle of self-pity. “Mommy, help me, Mommy.”

  Tyrone Sayers, would-be gunfighter, emptied the cylinder of his six-gun in panic. He hit exactly nothing.

  “Goddamn you, Smoke Jensen!” he ranted, mush-mouthed. “Goddamn you to hell.”

  “Give it up, punk. It’s not worth dying for,” Smoke advised him coldly.

  “You’re the one who’s gonna die. You’re gonna make me a rich man.”

  Smoke did not reply. Silence, he knew, had its own strong medicine. Instead he moved again, to come to ground at the base of a large pine. The magic of his sealed lips began to do its work.

  “Answer me, goddamn you. I’m gonna collect the bounty on your head.”

  By then, Tyrone Sayers had reloaded and came out of the brush in a bound that landed him beside the fire. He slip-thumbed four rounds from his Smith American before he discovered he had ventilated an empty bedroll. He slowly turned on one heel, his face a mask of confusion.

  “Come out. Show yourself like a man. Face me, you bastard,” Tyron wailed through puffy lips.

  Smoke Jensen stepped out into the clearing behind Tyrone Sayers. “Surprise.”

  Sayers spun and brought up his .44 Smith. Smoke had emptied his right-hand .45, which he wore low on his leg, and now drew his second revolver from the holster slanted across his left hip at belt level, butt forward. Before Tyrone Sayers could trigger his .44, Smoke completed hauling his iron. He lined it up, squeezed the trigger, and blasted a pinwheel hole through the heart of Tyrone Sayers.

  Sayers rocked back on his heels. His eyes began to glaze. He squinted as his life swiftly ebbed away, and tried to focus on his target. His arm would not raise. Then his knees gave way. He sank down hard on the ground and teetered for a long second. Then with a faint gasp, he rocked backward and fell, to land on his head.

  Ever cautious, Smoke Jensen made a careful check to determine that only the three had come after him. Then he reholstered his Peacemaker and addressed his remarks to the corpses.

  “Only damn thing is, now I have to gather up the bodies, lift them by myself and strap them on a horse.” They would serve as an excellent message to anyone who might follow.

  A rabbit munching its way through the clearing awakened Smoke Jensen in the still, gray light of pre-dawn. The bunny froze when Smoke rolled onto his back, threw off covers, and sat upright. He yawned and stretched, then drew on boots. The furry critter missed becoming breakfast by its second instinctive alternative. It decided to flee.

  Smoke stood up, stretched again and headed for the kindling to build a fire. While the coffee built, he considered what to do. He would take the other horses and all of the weapons and ammunition. His pack horse could easily carry the load. It might be better not to travel the main roads. If word of Spectre’s price on his head had traveled this far, the less he saw of anyone, or they of him, the better. The sooner he got to Jackson’s Hole, the quicker his trail would grow cold. Smoke fried bacon and mopped up the grease with leftover biscuits. He drank three cups of coffee, used the dregs to drown his fire, then buried what was left. He broke camp twenty minutes later and rode out.

  At mid-morning, Smoke noticed a thin white column rising beyond the near ridge. He crested the rise and looked down on a tidy little cabin, located on the shore of a small lake, formed by Lost Creek. A low barn and corral had been built against the shelter of a round-topped knoll. Smoke rode in cautiously and stopped fifty yards from the buildings when a stoop-shouldered oldtimer stepped out on the narrow porch.

  “Hello, the cabin,” Smoke called out in a friendly tone.

  “Hello, yerself,” came the reply. “Be you alone?”

  “That I am.”

  “If yer friendly, ride on up. I’ve coffee on the stove an’ I’m cookin’ up some eats for noon. Yer welcome to partake.”

  “Obliged.” Smoke rode in and introduced himself simply. “My name’s Jensen.”

  “Morgan Crosby. It’s nice to see a friendly face. Don’t get many folk out this way often. There’s water at the barn. Tie up yer critters there and come on in.”

  They sat at a linoleum-covered table and Crosby told of moving to this part of Wyoming after the War. His slight Southern accent put a capital on the word. “Yep. I rode with ol’ John Mosbey and the boys,” he remarked on his service for the Confederacy. Crosby gave Smoke a cold eye. “I suppose you was with the Union bluebellies?”

  “No. I didn’t take sides in the war. I’ve lived in the High Lonesome since I was a boy. I never developed feelings for one side or the other,” Smoke informed him.

  “Well, now, that sounds mighty fine. You headed anywhere in particular?”

  Smoke considered it only a moment before answering. “North. Up around the Yellowstone River.”

  Crosby poured them more coffee. “I never lost anything in that country, so I’ve no reason to want to go there.”

  “It’s beautiful. Quiet and peaceful, and what people do go through there are, for the most part, friendly.”

  A light twinkled in the eyes of Crosby. “Then there’s a few others that ain’t?”

  “Like everywhere,” Smoke agreed.

  Morgan Crosby roused himself from the chair. “All I’ve got’s some fatback an’ beans, creamed onions an’ taters.” An elfin twinkle came to his eyes. “But I had me some dried apples I put to soak early this mornin’. Made me a pie.”

  “Sounds good,” Smoke encouraged him.

  After they had eaten, with both men working on a second piece of dried apple pie, Smoke Jensen stiffened with the fork halfway to his mouth. A split second later, Morgan Crosby did the same.

  “Seems this is the day for visitors,” the old-timer muttered.

  “I make it to be four or five of them,” Smoke advised.

  “Yer hearin’s keener than mine,” Crosby admitted. “I wonder what’s on their minds.”

  A moment
later, they found out. “You in the cabin, come out with your hands up.”

  Smoke moved to a window with fluid speed. He peered around the corner of a scraped hide pane. “Is it the law?” Crosby asked.

  Unlimbering his .45 Colt, Smoke shook his head. “Not unless the law around here looks like grave diggers. There’s five of the scruffiest saddle trash out there that I’ve seen in a long time.”

  “Not friends of mine, then.” Then Crosby added, “You seem to attract the most unpleasant sort of company.”

  Ruefully, Smoke had to agree.

  “We’ll give you two minutes, then we fill the walls with holes,” came the warning from outside.

  She had looked everywhere. Early that morning, Ike Mitchell, the foreman, had come to the house to tell Sally Jensen that Bobby Harris had not slept in the bunkhouse the previous night, nor had he shown up for his work assignment. Immediately she checked upstairs. His bed had not been slept in either. She expanded her search to the area around the ranch headquarters.

  That had been an hour ago and still no sign of Bobby. Sally went to the corral and slipped a hackamore bridle on her sturdy mare, Blue Bonnet. She led the animal out and fetched a saddle.

  “Blue, girl,” she told the horse, while she saddled it, “we’ve got some searching to do.” She retrieved the reins and swung astride.

  Sally rode in widening spirals out from the Sugarloaf headquarters. Noon beckoned from close by and still no sign of the boy. Sally began to wonder if he had taken it into his head to go after Smoke.

  “Surely he wouldn’t,” she told herself aloud for more assurance.

  Her survey took her in the general direction of a low knoll with an ancient, huge, blue-green Douglas fir atop it. How the inviting target had escaped a lightning strike for the more than hundred years it had grown, neither she nor Smoke could guess. While she approached it, with Blue Bonnet bucking in protest to such prolonged activity after two days of idleness in the corral, Sally began to make out the shape of a figure at the base of the tree. At first it appeared to be a jackrabbit hunkered down in the low grass.

  After a while, Sally could tell that more was attached to the earlike shape than a mere rabbit body. At fifty yards, she could see the profile of a human face. Closer still, she recognized Bobby’s pug nose and slight frame. His horse grazed peacefully down the reverse slope and his bedroll lay rumpled at his side. Relief swallowed anger but, even so, she spoke harshly when she rode up and he did not even acknowledge her presence. In fact, he deliberately turned away to gaze off toward the 14,000-foot peak that towered to the west.

  “Young man, what possible right do you think you have to put us to all the effort to find you?”

  “I was right here,” Bobby told her through his pout, tears formed in his big, blue eyes.

  “That’s not even a reason.” Sally dismounted and walked to his side. “You have your duties with the hands. Also, you are entirely too old for this sort of behavior.”

  Bobby turned to look at her then. It was immediately obvious to Sally that he was about to lose his battle with his tears. “And I’m old enough to have gone with Smoke, too,” he stubbornly maintained.

  “No, you’re not!” Sally snapped back, small fists on her hips. The split skirt of her riding habit swirled violently as she resisted the urge to stomp a foot. “This fantasy of yours has gone on long enough. I’m sorry, Bobby, but you are going to have to look at this realistically.” She softened her tone, surprised at how harsh it had grown. “If you intend to remain on the Sugarloaf, as our adopted son, or even as merely a ranch hand, then you have to learn to face facts.

  “You must take responsibility for your acts.” She paused, sighing. Was he absorbing any of this? “And most of all, to obey orders given to you. Smoke and I both love you, and we don’t want to see any harm come to you.”

  “Then maybe I won’t stay,” he answered coldly, then stomped away to his horse.

  Smoke Jensen and Mogan Crosby found themselves under siege as rifle slugs cracked through the thin hide windows of the cabin. Smoke strode to the door, yanked it open, and made a quick response. A yelp of pain answered him. Then four slugs slammed into the thick log walls. Horse hooves clopped in the barnyard.

  Smoke moved also. At one window, he lifted a corner for a quick look. He caught two of the hard cases in the act of entering the barn. That left three more. One no doubt wounded. They would be taking up positions also. He cut his eyes to Morgan.

  “I got me a good shotgun an’ a bag of buckshot,” the old man suggested.

  “We’re in for a siege. I’m more worried about water and food.”

  Crosby chuckled, a sort of squeaky he-he-he sound, and pointed to a squarish wooden structure on one end of the sink counter. “I dug me my well first, then built the cabin around it. ‘Tweren’t nothin’ but Injuns out here then. I spent me many days and nights forted up in here. I’ve got a tunnel to my root cellar, too. And another to the barn.”

  Smoke raised an eyebrow at that. “That’s one you might live to regret.”

  “Oh, you mean them fellers out there? Won’t be any problem. The door is built into the bottom of a grain bin an’ locked from this side. I keep just enough grain in there to hide it.”

  Smoke scratched his head in wonder. “Where did you come up with all these ideas?”

  “I went to Europe when I was young. Saw what they did in all those castles. Some of them, those with wells, were never taken by siege.”

  “I am impressed. Now, our only real problem is if they send the wounded man for reinforcements. It would be nice to know where they came from.”

  “Yep. I allow to as how it would, though the Basin has been crawlin’ with proddy fellers for the last four, maybe five days. Dependin’ on whether they’re locals or not, could be we’re in for a rough time of it.”

  Ace Delevan had been a liar and thief all of his life. He became a killer at the tender age of twelve. Since then he had killed thirty men and maimed twice that number. He figured that made him an ideal choice as the one who would get Smoke Jensen. Though a vicious thug, none would say Ace Delevan was stupid. That’s why he brought along four of his cronies. Now Hank had a nasty bullet scrape on his upper left thigh and sat in a stall of the barn whining like a baby.

  Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to come on like lawmen? They had heard in Baggs that Jensen had passed through. And that three local punks had gone after him—and hadn’t returned. Delevan and his friends rode on until they came upon a horse overburdened by three corpses. They backtracked the animal and picked up the trail of a man who had to be Smoke Jensen.

  Although Smoke Jensen was reputed to have been on both sides of the law at one time or another, Ace Delevan knew that he most often sided with the law. Which gave him his big idea. If Jensen thought them to be lawmen, his respect for the breed would get him out in the open so they could blow him to doll rags. Ace accepted that one or two of his partners would buy a bullet. But he knew himself to be fast and accurate. At least as much so as anyone he knew. He would still be the one to collect that reward on Jensen’s head. A silhouette moved across one of the vellum windows and he fired in reaction.

  A hole popped in the scraped animal skin. No response from a wounded man. One thing bothered Ace. He had no idea how many men were in there. Jensen for sure, he had gotten a glimpse of a broad-shouldered, ash-blond man in the doorway. A man so quick and steady he put a slug along the side of Hank Graves’s thigh. A groan came from the wounded man as Ducky Yoder finished bandaging the limb.

  “How’s he doin’, Ducky?”

  “I’m doin’ miserable, Ace,” Hank answered for himself.

  “He can ride, if that’s what you want to know,” a surly Ducky Yoder growled.

  Ace Delevan slitted his eyes. “Who said we were gonna ride anywhere? Smoke Jensen is in there an’ we’re gonna git him.”

  Ducky cut his eyes to the open barn doors and the cabin beyond it. “Who says that’s Jensen in there?” He m
eant, “besides you.”

  Ace chewed on the drooping left end of his mustache. “I say it’s him. For that matter then, you tell me what man could fling open that door, jump into the openin’, bust off a cap, an’ pop back outta sight without even gettin’ a shot at him if it ain’t Jensen.”

  That silenced Ducky for the moment. Ace eased through the shadowy interior of the barn to where he could see through a crack. Burl Winfree and Pauli Hansel had taken up good positions that covered the front door. They had the back covered. A clapboard add-on had been tacked to the rear, to allow for a kitchen and wash house. The door to that hung open a slight bit. Ace sighted in.

  A billow of gunsmoke obscured his results for a while. When he could see clearly, he found only a neat little hole. He fired again. Something made of glass broke inside. There followed a shout of anger, then a cloud of wood splinters that cut at his face. The boom of the shotgun got drowned in his curses.

  Ace plucked a splinter from his cheek as he turned to the other ruffians. “There’s at least two of them in there.”

  “Then we’d better think up some way of getting them out or us in,” Ducky Yoder suggested.

  Ace shook his head. “We ain’t gonna do that, just the five of us. Hank, can you ride well enough to go round up the Joiner brothers an’ Wally Eckert?”

  Hank winced. “I reckon. Iffin I can reach my horse.”

  “Might oughtta find Jake Brock an’ Jose Suarez, too.”

  Ducky Yoder put in his two cents worth. “Jeez, that’s scraping the bottom of the barrel, isn’t it?”

  Ace blinked. “Ya mean Jose?”

  “Naw. I mean Jake. He’s a hopeless drunk.”

  The trio laughed. Ducky helped Hank to his feet. “Go out the side door an’ cut through the corral. Your mount is at the water trough,” he told Hank.