Warpath of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “Indians!” someone shouted. “Get your guns, boys, and get to shootin’!”

  Now Blue Horses and Swift Bear were shooting fire arrows into the compound. The bunkhouse and barn were quickly enveloped in flames. Within a few minutes the hired hands ran from the bunkhouse, coughing and gasping for breath. That was exactly what Tatum wanted, and he and the others directed their firing at the men who were so devastated by smoke inhalation that they were unable to put up any kind of effective response. Within moments, all were down.

  “Hold it! Hold it!” Tatum shouted to his men. “Stop firing. I think we’ve got ’em all.”

  “What about from the house?” McCord asked.

  “Anyone hear any shootin’ come from the house?” Tatum asked.

  “I didn’t hear nothin’,” Clinton said.

  “You boys hear anything?” Tatum asked the Indians. Both responded in the negative.

  “Could be they’re already dead. Or maybe, nobody was there in the first place.”

  “How do we find out?” McCord asked.

  “We’ll surround the house,” Tatum replied. “Pigiron, you, Jason, and Wheeler go round front and bust in through the front door. Sanchez, Arino, you two go in through windows there on the left side of the house. Jim, you, Blue Horses, and Swift Bear go in through windows on the right. Me’n Clinton will bust in through the back door.”

  Tatum led his men down to the main house. There were four bodies on the ground: the hand who was killed as he left the outhouse and the three who had run out from the bunkhouse. The outlaws approached the main house cautiously, not sure of who was still inside, or even if whoever was inside was still alive.

  Tatum gave the signal, and his men moved into the positions he had assigned them.

  “All right, boys! Let’s go!” he shouted. He started toward the back door, then stepped to one side, indicating that Clinton should go in first. Clinton hesitated for just a moment, then he burst in through the door. As he did so, he caught a charge of double-ought buckshot from a ten-gauge Greener shotgun. The blast knocked him back outside, and he fell on the porch with his guts ripped open and his head hanging halfway down the steps. Looking cautiously around the door frame, Tatum saw a boy of about twelve trying desperately to reload the shotgun he had just fired.

  “Hold it right there, boy!” Tatum shouted, jumping in through the door and pointing his gun at Buddy. “You’re pretty damn handy with that scattergun.”

  “Not handy enough,” Buddy said. “If I was, you’d be dead too.”

  “You’ve got a big mouth. Where are the others?”

  “What others? There ain’t no one here but me.”

  “You expect me to believe you are all alone here?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Where’s your pa?”

  “He’s down in Texas, buying bulls.”

  “What about your ma?”

  “I told you, nobody else is here.”

  Looking over toward the sideboard, Tatum saw a plate of biscuits and bacon. “You plannin’ on eatin’ all this yourself, were you?” Tatum said. He broke apart a biscuit, laid several pieces of bacon on it, then making a sandwich of it, began eating.

  “Let me go!” a woman’s voice said from the front of the house. “Who are you people? What are you doing here?”

  An attractive woman and a young girl were dragged into the kitchen.

  “Look what we found,” McCord said.

  “Are you Mrs. Burke?” Tatum asked, his words muffled by the fact that his mouth was full of biscuit and bacon.

  “It’s none of your business who I am,” Jo Ellen answered defiantly.

  Almost distractedly, Tatum backhanded Sue Ann, knocking the little girl against the wall. She slid down to the floor, her nose and mouth bleeding. Immediately, she began crying.

  “What are you doing?” Jo Ellen screamed in rage.

  “If you don’t want the little girl hit anymore, answer the question, woman. Are you the wife of the jury foreman who sentenced me to hang?”

  “Yes,” Jo Ellen said. “I’m only sorry that the state didn’t get the job done.”

  “Good. That’s all I wanted to know,” Tatum said. He took another bite of his biscuit sandwich.

  “What do we do with them?” McCord asked.

  “Kill ’em,” Tatum said, his words muffled by the fact that his mouth was full of biscuit and bacon.

  “You sure? Seems to me like if we keep the woman alive, we could have a little fun with her,” McCord said. But almost before he could finish his statement, Tatum drew his own pistol and shot the woman.

  “Mama!” Sue Ann screamed. Tatum’s next shot stopped the little girl in mid-cry.

  “You son of a bitch!” Buddy shouted.

  Tatum pointed his gun at the boy. “I saved you till last so you could watch your mama and sister die,” he said evilly.

  Buddy glared at him.

  “I guess you think your mama and sister are in heaven, huh?”

  “I know they are.”

  “Then look at it this way. You won’t be apart very long, because I’m about to send you to heaven to be with them.”

  Buddy shook his head. “Uh-uh. I’ll get around to going heaven,” he said. “But first I’m going to wait for you in hell so I can soak your ass in kerosene and watch you burn, you sorry son of a bitch.”

  “Ha, ha! Gutsy little shit, ain’t he?” Pigiron said, laughing.

  “Like I said, kid, you’ve got a big mouth.” Tatum shot Buddy in the heart. Then, holstering his pistol, he made himself another bacon and biscuit sandwich. Some of the others started to eat as well, but Tatum waved them away.

  “We ain’t got time to eat,” he said. “Get busy. Remember, this has to look like the work of Indians.”

  Tatum looked back toward Jo Ellen’s body. That was when he saw, for the first time, the gold chain with diamond pendant that was around her neck.

  “I reckon I’ll just take that as a little souvenir,” he said. He grabbed the chain, then hung it around his own neck. “All right, let’s go, get busy. We can’t hang around here all day,” he shouted to the others.

  There was a little grumbling about not getting to enjoy the grub, but the men went to work as ordered, scalping and mutilating the bodies. Perry Blue Horses and Russell Swift Bear left a few more arrows around.

  “Hey, Jack, ole Clinton here is still alive,” Wheeler called from the back porch.

  “He can’t still be alive. Hell, that Greener purt’ nigh took out all his innards.”

  “Yeah, it did that, all right. But he’s still groanin’. What’ll we do with him?”

  “Leave him, he’ll die soon enough,” McCord said.

  “No, we can’t leave him here. This is supposed to be the work of Indians, remember?” Tatum said. “Drag ’im back to the horses, then throw him belly down across his. We’ll take him somewhere else to get rid of him.”

  After a few more minutes of leaving Indian sign, Tatum ordered his men away and, dragging the nearly lifeless body of Clinton with them, they mounted and rode off. Three quarters of an hour later they were ten miles south.

  * * *

  It was Cal who discovered the carnage at Timber Notch Ranch. He had been riding the fence line when he saw the smoke. Realizing that so much smoke had to mean a burning building, he rode hard to get there. From the looks of the smoke the fire had a pretty good start, so he wasn’t sure he would be able to do anything to help once he arrived, but he intended to be there to help nevertheless.

  His first suspicion that something was wrong was when he reached the place and saw that, while the fire outside was still raging, no one was attempting to fight it. The barn was burning and the stock was still in the corral, gathered in a frightened bunch at the far end. The horses were wild-eyed and restless; the milk cows were milling about as if dazed. Although the barn, bunkhouse, and granary were on fire, the main house and the outhouse were not. It was then that he saw someone lying on the ground
near the outhouse. Urging his horse to a gallop, he crossed the remaining distance very quickly, then dismounted.

  “Oh, shit!” he said aloud. The man on the ground was the foreman of Timber Notch, Ben Goodpasture. Ben had an arrow sticking from his body, and he had been scalped. In various positions around the burning bunkhouse lay the bodies of Tom Burke’s remaining ranch hands.

  “Mrs. Burke!” Cal shouted, running toward the house. “Mrs. Burke, are you here?”

  Cal darted up the steps and into the kitchen. There, just inside the kitchen door, he saw young Buddy’s body. Like the hands outside, Buddy had been scalped. Mrs. Burke had been scalped as well as mutilated. Both breasts had been cut off. Only the little girl was neither scalped nor mutilated, though there was blood on her face, as if she had been beaten before she was shot.

  Cal felt sick, and he turned and went back outside, then walked over to the edge of the porch, where he grabbed hold of one of the supporting posts. He stood there for a long moment, breathing deeply and trying hard to force the image of what he had just seen out of his mind. Then, when he was no longer afraid he was about to throw up, he walked back out to his horse, mounted, and started the long ride back to Sugarloaf.

  It was nearly noon by the time he got back. Smoke, Sally, and Pearlie were just sitting down to eat when Cal came in.

  “Cal, good, you’re just in time,” Sally started. “Wash up and . . .” Sally stopped in mid-sentence as she stared at Cal. “Good heavens, Cal, what is it? You look as if you have seen a ghost.”

  “It’s Mrs. Burke,” Cal said.

  “Jo Ellen? She’s here?”

  Cal shook his head. “Not just Mrs. Burke. It’s her, the boy, the little girl, Ben, and all the hands. All of them. Every one of them.” Cal stopped for a moment, then took a deep breath. “They’re dead.”

  “What?” Sally asked with a gasp.

  “They’re dead. Every one of them,” Cal said. “I just got back from their place. Looks like they were attacked by Indians.”

  “Indians? That’s impossible. There aren’t any warring Indians around here,” Smoke said.

  “They burned the barn, the bunkhouse, the granary. There’s arrows all over the place and every one of them have been scalped.”

  “Oh, God in heaven, Smoke, what will we do?” Sally asked.

  “If it’s already done, there’s nothing we can do,” Smoke replied. “Except see to it that Tom gets the word.”

  “Oh, that poor man,” Sally said.

  The lunch Sally had just put on the table went uneaten. Even Pearlie had no appetite for this meal.

  8

  It had been three days since the massacre at Timber Notch. Smoke Jensen, wearing a black suit and black bolo tie, was leaning against the wall in the kitchen of his house with his arms folded across his chest. Sally, who was wearing a black hat, was fussing with the veil, part of the funeral ensemble she was wearing. Pearlie was sitting at the table eating a piece of pie left over from supper the night before. Pearlie didn’t own a black suit, but he was wearing a brown suit and a white shirt. The door opened and Cal came in. Cal didn’t have a suit of any kind, but he was wearing clean jeans and a clean and pressed white shirt, complete with closed collar and a bolo tie he had borrowed from Smoke.

  “The surrey is all hitched up, Smoke,” Cal said.

  “Thanks, Cal. If we can pull Pearlie away from the pie, we’re ready.”

  “Uhmm, if you’re waiting on me, you’re backing up,” Pearlie said, making a point to jump up quickly. He took one step away from the table, then reached back, picked up the last piece of pie, and shoved it in his mouth as they started toward the door.

  “Has anyone heard from Tom Burke yet?” Pearlie asked as they climbed into the surrey. Pearlie rode in the front seat alongside Cal, who was driving. Smoke helped Sally into the backseat, then got in beside her.

  “Tom wired back that he would be on the five o’clock train this morning,” Smoke said. “So I suspect he’s already here.”

  “How awful this must be for him,” Sally said. “There he was down in Texas, buying cattle, when he gets the telegram that his family and all his hired hands were killed by Indians.”

  “If it was Indians,” Smoke said.

  Cal snapped the reins and the team pulled the surrey away smartly. As it rolled up the road, its wheels singing on the hard-packed dirt, Smoke turned to look back. The house and buildings of his own ranch gleamed brightly in the morning sun. It was a neatly kept, well-laid-out ranch that spoke well of Smoke’s success, and even more of Sally’s industry and creativity, for it was she who had made Sugarloaf the showplace that it was.

  Seeing his ranch made Smoke feel an even greater sense of sympathy for his friend Tom Burke, for Tom had been every bit as proud of Timber Notch as Smoke was of Sugarloaf. Now, with his family dead, what was the purpose?

  There were scores of buggies, surreys, buckboards, wagons, carriages, and horses around the cemetery in Big Rock, for Tom Burke was a well-liked and highly respected man in the area. Ben Goodpasture and one of the hired hands who had been killed at Tom’s ranch had been buried the day before. Even before Tom returned, he’d made arrangements, by telegram, to pay for their funerals. The other two hired hands had been sent, by train, back to their families, one in St. Louis, the other in Memphis, also at Tom’s expense. The funeral today was for Jo Ellen, Tom Jr.—who was called Buddy by everyone—and Sue Ann.

  Cal parked the surrey behind one of the several long lines of conveyances that were arrayed around the cemetery; then the four climbed down and walked up the path toward the three open graves. There were more than five hundred people gathered for the funeral. That number included nearly everyone from Big Rock as well as people from all over the Las Animas County. When Smoke and his companions reached the top of the hill where the three were to be buried, Smoke saw Tom Burke sitting in a chair next to the open graves. Tom’s uncovered head was bowed, his silver hair shining. Smoke knew that the loss of his family was a particularly cruel blow for Tom, because family life had come late to him.

  “Oh, Smoke,” Sally said, putting her hand on his arm. “Look at the poor man. Have you ever seen anything so sad? We must speak to him.”

  “All right,” Smoke agreed.

  The four moved through the crowd until they reached Tom. From this position they could see the three coffins waiting to be lowered into the openings, one full-sized and two smaller ones. The air was redolent with the many floral arrangements that were scattered around, including a full bouquet of roses on top of the larger coffin, and a single rose on top of each of the two smaller coffins, red for Sue Ann, yellow for Buddy.

  “Oh, Tom, I am so sorry about this,” Sally said as she leaned down to embrace their friend and neighbor.

  “Thank you,” Tom mumbled.

  “Tom,” Smoke said, taking his friend’s hand. It was all he could think to say.

  “Smoke, I don’t aim to just let this go,” Tom said.

  Smoke shook his head. “No, I didn’t expect you would.”

  “Can I count on you?”

  Smoke felt, rather than saw, Sally’s quick glance toward him.

  “Yes, of course you can,” he said.

  Pearlie and Cal paid their respects as well; then the four of them moved away from the bereaved rancher, finding a nearby place to stand that would keep them away from the crowd, yet afford them a good view.

  “What was that all about?” Sally asked.

  “What?” Smoke replied innocently, though he knew exactly what she meant.

  “He said he wasn’t going to let it go. Then he asked if he could count on you. You said, and I quote, ‘Yes, of course you can.’”

  “I’m sure he intends to go after whoever did this,” Smoke said.

  “Why? Going after the murderers isn’t going to bring Tom’s family back.”

  “I know it won’t, but that’s not the point,” Smoke said. He put his arm around Sally and pulled her closer to him. “I don�
��t quite know how to explain it, Sally, but leaving Sugarloaf this morning, I looked back at it and thought about it, and you and . . . well, I reckon it just gave me a deeper feeling about what Tom’s going through right now. I know we can’t bring his family back, but getting the ones who did it and making them pay? That can go a long way toward bringing him some peace of mind. And if there’s any way I can help him do that, I aim to do it. I hope you understand.”

  “Whether I understand or not, you’re going to help him find the renegade Indians who did this, aren’t you?”

  “I reckon I am,” Smoke said. “But it would set a lot easier with me if you understood and approved.”

  Sally sighed. “Of course I understand,” she said. “You have a tremendous generosity of spirit, Smoke Jensen. I think that is one of the reasons I fell in love with you.”

  The preacher stood up then and the buzz of conversation halted. The tall, gaunt man looked out over the assembled mourners, giving them a moment to interrupt their conversations and focus on the task at hand, that of burying some of their own.

  Once he had their attention, the preacher delivered a homily invoking God’s wrath upon the evil savages who would perpetrate such a thing. After that, he reminded everyone of the promise of a joyous reunion in the hereafter. Finally, after the coffins were lowered into the grave, the preacher invited Tom to drop a handful of earth onto each of them. As Tom did so, the preacher intoned his final prayer.

  “For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God in his wise providence to take out of this world the souls of Jo Ellen, Sue Ann, and Thomas Jr., we therefore commit their bodies to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; looking for the general Resurrection in the last day, and the life of the world to come through Our Lord Jesus Christ; at whose second coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the earth and the sea shall give up their dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him shall be changed, and made like unto his own glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself. Amen.”