Quest of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Smoke started to nod, and then he thought. Wait a minute. Why not? Sally’s going to be gone for many months, and I’m bored with ranch life. Why not go off on an adventure? It might be the last chance I get to traverse uncharted, uninhabited land in the company of my mountain-man friends.

  “Ordinarily, that would be true, Bill, but as it so happens, my wife is away on an extended trip just now. Let me think it over for a day or so and I’ll get back to you.”

  “Excellent,”Bill said. “Let’s have a drink to your making the right decision.”

  3

  Van Horne pulled a gold watch from his vest pocket and glanced at the time. “It’s still a little early for hard liquor, but it’s never too early for beer.”

  He glanced around, but the waiter was nowhere to be seen. He got to his feet. “I’ll just go to the bar and get us a pitcher of Louis’s finest beer.”

  He walked over to the bar and squeezed in between several men who were standing at the bar.

  “My good man,” he said to the bartender, “would you be so kind as to bring a pitcher of beer and five mugs to my table?”

  One of the cowboys at the bar stepped back and looked at Van Horne, his eyes going up and down. “Well, just listen to Mr. High-and-Mighty here,” he said in a loud voice, slurred by too much whiskey too early in the day. He was tall and slim, with a wide leather belt inlaid with silver conchos, and his boots had silver toes. He was wearing twin Peacemaker Colts with pearl handles tied down low on his hips.

  To Van Horne, he seemed to be trying to look like the desperados in the penny dreadfuls.

  “Pardon me?” Bill asked, turning to look at the man.

  “Pardon you?” the man responded sarcastically. “Pardon you for what? For being so fat you can’t hardly get through the door?”

  “Oh-oh,” Smoke said in a low voice to Louis. “Looks like trouble at the bar.”

  Louis started to get up, but Smoke put a hand on his arm. “Wait a minute, Louis, let’s see how Bill handles this,” Smoke said, wanting to see how the big man handled himself. If he was going to be out in the wilderness with Van Horne, he wanted to see what he was made of. Smoke didn’t think Van Horne was heeled, so he loosened the rawhide hammer thong on his own Colt just in case the confrontation turned deadly.

  Bill snorted and turned back to the bar, trying to ignore the drunk, but the man grabbed him by the shoulder and whirled him around. “Don’t turn your back on me while I’m talking to you, fatty.”

  Bill’s hand moved so quick that Smoke could hardly see it as he reached up, grabbed the lout by the throat, and lifted him up until his feet dangled a foot off the floor. As the man’s face turned purple and he grabbed Bill’s hand, trying to pry it loose, Bill said calmly, “You, sir, are rude and obnoxious, and I cannot abide rudeness.” He cocked his head to the side and stared into the man’s bulging eyes. “Often rudeness is prevalent in men whose intelligence is akin to a dog’s,” he added contemptuously.

  He gave a final squeeze and without apparent effort threw the man across the room, where he landed flat on his back, still gasping for breath.

  One of the man’s friends stepped away from the bar and dropped his hand to his pistol butt. Smoke was just about to draw, for he would never allow an unarmed man to be gunned down, when Bill drew back his right arm and punched the man in the face so hard he splattered his nose flat and knocked the man to his knees.

  A third man, his eyes wide, let his hand drop toward his gun and Smoke called out, “I wouldn’t do that, partner.”

  The man glanced at Smoke and saw the barrel of his. 44 pointed right at his head. “This ain’t no fight of yours, mister,” the man said uncertainly, but his hand stopped moving and hung there in the air, shaking slightly.

  “It is when you’re drawing on a man who isn’t heeled,” Smoke said. “You want to say something to Mr. Van Horne, say it with your fists, not that hogleg on your hip.”

  Bill squared off with the man, his fists at his side. “Well, sir, do you have something you wish to add?”

  The man looked around at his friends, one still blue and gasping and the other with his nose spread all over his face. “Uh, no . . . I guess not.”

  “Then I suggest that the next time you want to drink your lunch, you do it someplace else,” Bill said, picking up the tray with the pitcher of beer and mugs on it. He turned his back on the man and walked back to the table, as if nothing had happened.

  Smoke smiled at him. Van Horne hadn’t even broken a sweat. “You pack a mean punch, Bill,” he said as Bill poured them all beer.

  Bill looked at him out of the corner of his eye, a slight grin on his face. “When you supervise thousands of men building a railroad, Smoke, you either learn to be good with your fists or you stay behind a desk.” He upended his beer and drained it in one long swallow. As he sleeved suds off his mustache, he grinned. “And I never was one for staying behind a desk.”

  “How come you don’t carry a gun, Mr. Van Horne?” Cal asked.

  Bill poured himself another beer. “Oh, I do when I’m out in the field working, Cal, but when I’m in town, I don’t usually see the need.” He took a swallow, smaller this time, and added, “Of course, I may have to change my mind about that in the future.”

  “Are you any good with a short gun?” Pearlie asked, impressed by Bill’s coolness under fire.

  Bill shrugged. “I’m not the fastest gun around, Pearlie, but I hit what I aim at, and I’m told that’s more important than being fast.”

  Smoke held up his mug. “I’ll drink to that,” he said, laughing.

  * * *

  After they’d said their good-byes to Bill and Louis, Smoke and the boys stepped out of the saloon and walked toward their horses.

  The three cowboys from the bar were waiting out in the street, one of them with his nose still dripping blood onto his shirt.

  “Hey, you!” one of the other two called.

  Smoke stopped and looked over at him. “Are you talking to me?” he asked calmly.

  “Yeah. You’re gonna learn not to stick your nose in other people’s business.”

  When they heard the commotion outside, Louis and Bill stepped to the window to see what was happening.

  Bill started to move toward the batwings, but Louis stopped him. “But I can’t let Smoke fight my battles for me,” Bill said.

  “Just watch, Bill. I want you to see Smoke in action.”

  “Oh,” Smoke said to the gunny. “And I suppose you’re going to teach me?”

  “That’s right, asshole,” the man said, crouching with his hand held over the butt of his pistol. “Me and my friends.”

  “You want some help, Smoke?” Pearlie said, covering a yawn with the back of his hand, seemingly unconcerned about the men standing before them.

  “No, I don’t think so, Pearlie,” Smoke said. “After all, there’s only three of them.”

  “All right,” Pearlie said, and he and Cal moved to the side. Pearlie leaned back against a post with his arms crossed.

  “By the way, gentlemen,” he said conversationally, “what are your names?”

  The man with the bloody nose looked over at him. “Why do you want to know?” he asked angrily.

  Pearlie shrugged. “Most people like to have their names on their tombstones, so I thought I’d ask.”

  Sweat began to appear on the man’s forehead, and he turned back to face Smoke.

  Smoke looked at him, his eyes as mean and black as a snake’s. “Either draw or go back to the hole you crawled out of,” Smoke said, his voice hard. “I got things to do.”

  “You son of a . . .” the man snarled as he went for his gun.

  Quicker than it takes to tell it, Smoke drew and fired three times. The man with the bloody nose was hit high in the left shoulder, the slug spinning him around to fall facedown, screaming in pain. The second and third men were both hit in the middle of their chests and blown onto their backs, dead before they hit the ground. Not one of them had
cleared leather.

  Bill and Louis came out of the saloon, Bill shaking his head. “I’d heard you were fast, Smoke, but I never believed just how fast.”

  Smoke punched out his empty brass and reloaded his pistol. “Like you say, Bill, it’s more important to be accurate than fast.”

  Bill laughed. “But it’s even better to be both, Smoke.”

  Smoke walked over to stand over the injured man, who was moaning and crying and holding his shoulder, blood dripping between his fingers.

  Smoke dropped two twenty-dollar gold pieces on his chest. “Here you go, mister. Use this to bury your friends and to get your arm taken care of.”

  He started to walk away, and then stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “And do it by sundown and then get out of town, ’cause if I ever see your face again, ever, I’ll kill you.”

  4

  Smoke spent the next two days working around the ranch, overseeing his men as they tended fences, worked cattle, and made sure the new calves they’d separated from their mothers were all doing all right. As he worked, he found himself increasingly looking at the snow-covered peaks of the Rockies in the distance, a longing in his heart he’d ignored for far too long.

  Finally, he’d had enough. He was bored silly, and Sally’s absence just made matters worse. Smoke decided to take Van Horne up on his offer to help with finding a suitable route for the Canadian railroad. After all, he’d been wanting to get back up into the mountains and see his old mountain-man friends for some time, and this would be a perfect opportunity, what with Sally gone for who knows how long.

  He rode over to the ranch nearest the Sugarloaf, and asked his old friend Johnny North if he’d keep a watch on the place for him while he was gone. North agreed to ride over every week or so and make sure the hands Smoke had working for him didn’t need anything, and to keep a close eye on his livestock in his absence.

  Smoke decided to take Cal and Pearlie along for company, and to teach them a thing or two about mountain living. Both men had long been fascinated with the High Lonesome and had met some of Smoke’s mountain-man friends on previous occasions, and were overjoyed at the chance to ride with them once again.

  So, when the packhorses were loaded with the supplies Smoke thought they would need, he and the boys rode into Big Rock, ready to travel. Smoke sent a telegram to Sally in Boston telling her of his plans and promising to keep in touch whenever they were near a telegraph, and then they met up with Van Horne in front of Louis Longmont’s saloon.

  This time, instead of his three-piece suit, Van Horne was dressed for the trail in trousers, riding boots, and a flannel shirt that looked large enough to use as a sleeping blanket. He had a Smith and Wesson nickel-plated pistol in a holster on his belt and a brand-new Winchester rifle in his saddle boot.

  His packhorse was loaded down with enough food for a year, and Smoke grinned and shook his head. It was clear Van Horne did not intend to go hungry on this trip up into the mountains to find some mountain men to ride with them.

  “Hello, Smoke, boys,” Bill called as they approached.

  “I can see you’ve got plenty of provisions for the trip,” Smoke said, smiling.

  Bill looked over his shoulder at the boxes piled high on the back of the packhorse and nodded. “Yes, of course, I’m packed for two people.”

  “Two?” Smoke asked.

  The batwings of the saloon swung open and Louis Longmont stepped out. “Yes, Smoke. I decided that it was not fair for you to have all the fun this time, so I have elected to join you on your little jaunt.”

  Longmont had also given up his trademark black suit for trail clothes, though his still looked as if they’d been made by a French tailor. His black pants were freshly ironed and his dark leather coat was as shiny as his knee-high black boots. He wore a brace of Colts on his belt, and had a Henry repeating rifle slung over his shoulder as he walked toward his horse.

  “Is Andre gonna come too, Mr. Longmont?” Pearlie asked, licking his lips in anticipation of fine meals being cooked every night.

  Longmont shook his head. “Not on your life, Pearlie. Andre’s place is in the kitchen, not on the back of a horse.”

  “Oh,” Pearlie said, disappointed.

  Louis and Van Horne swung up into their saddles and looked at Smoke. “Ready?” Louis asked.

  “As I’ll ever be,” Smoke answered, and spurred his horse into a slow canter down the main street of Big Rock, heading north toward snow-covered mountain peaks in the distance.

  As they swung into line behind him, Pearlie leaned over in his saddle and said to Cal, “I sure hope they ain’t expectin’ you to do the cookin’ on this here trip.”

  “Why not?” Cal asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “’Cause I plumb forgot to bring any stomach salts to ease the bellyache your food causes.”

  * * *

  Two days later, as their horses moved slowly up the side of a mountain slope that was still covered with snowdrifts two feet deep, Smoke held up his hand and the procession slowed to a halt.

  Bill Van Horne pulled his horse up next to Smoke’s and said, “What is it? Why are we stopping?”

  Smoke raised his nose in the air and sniffed. “I smell smoke—campfire smoke.”

  Van Horne sniffed. “I don’t smell anything?”

  Before Smoke could answer, a loud booming gunshot echoed through the tall ponderosa pines that surrounded them on all sides, followed quickly by several higher-pitched cracks of rifle fire in the distance.

  “What the hell?” Van Horne said as his horse stamped and jumped to the side.

  Smoke’s forehead wrinkled as he stared in the direction of the sounds. “That first shot was from a Sharps, and the ones that followed were from a Winchester.”

  “Don’t most of the mountain men use Sharps?” Cal asked, standing tall in his stirrups to try and see through the forest.

  “Yeah, and it sounds like someone’s in trouble,” Smoke said, spurring his horse forward as he leaned over its head.

  As the men road up the side of the mountain, pistols out and ready, they heard more gunshots from up ahead, the sharper cracks of the Winchesters being answered by the deeper booming of a Sharps Big Fifty.

  After riding as fast as the horses could run through the deep snow for twenty minutes, Smoke reined his horse in and was out of the saddle before it came to a complete stop.

  He jerked his Winchester out of his saddle boot, and crouched down as he jogged up to the crest of a small hillock and peered over the edge.

  The others joined him, all holding rifles cradled in their arms. Below, they could see a small campfire with four paint ponies tied to a tree nearby and a makeshift shelter made out of pine limbs piled at an angle against a large boulder, forming a lean-to.

  There was blood in the snow around the fire and tracks where a body had been dragged into the lean-to. A long, black barrel was sticking out of the pine limbs and firing at several men who were lying behind logs and rocks in a semicircle around the camp, firing back into the lean-to.

  “What’s going on?” Van Horne whispered to Smoke as he peered down at the scene below.

  “Looks like some mountain men are being fired on by those fellows over there,” Smoke answered, nodding toward the men on the ground below.

  “How do you know they’re mountain men in the camp?” Van Horne asked.

  “They’re riding Indian ponies, and they’re using a Sharps Big Fifty.” He pointed his finger down at the camp. “And see, there’s a pile of beaver and fox pelts over next to the horses. That’s probably what the men are after.”

  Van Horne nodded. “I see.”

  Smoke laid his rifle barrel on a rock in front of him, took careful aim, and fired.

  One of the men below screamed in pain, grabbed his leg, and rolled over onto his back, shouting, “I’m hit!”

  Smoke levered another round into his Winchester and stood up. “Drop your weapons, or I’ll put the next one in your head!” he shouted, poi
nting the barrel of his rifle at the men below.

  One of the men made the mistake of turning his rifle toward Smoke, who quickly fired, hitting the man square in the forehead. As his blood and brains sprayed all over the snow around him, the other men slowly put their rifles down and stood up, their hands in the air.

  “Now, come on out from behind those rocks so I can see you,” Smoke yelled.

  Three men walked out into the open, one stopping to help the wounded man get to his feet and limp out with them.

  “Bring the horses,” Smoke said over his shoulder as he stepped over the ridge and walked down toward the men, the barrel of his rifle still pointing at them and his finger on the trigger.

  “Yo, the camp,” he called, not wanting to be shot by whoever was in the lean-to.

  “Who be you?” a gravelly voice called from behind the barrel of the Sharps as it swiveled to point toward Smoke.

  “Bear Tooth, is that you?” Smoke called, a grin on his face.

  “Smoke? Smoke Jensen?” the voice answered as a huge man, well over six and a half feet in height, appeared in the opening of the lean-to, a Sharps cradled in his arms.

  While Smoke’s eyes were on Bear Tooth, one of the men in the clearing dropped his hand and went for a pistol on his belt.

  Smoke jumped as a rifle went off behind him and a hole you could put a fist through appeared on the man’s chest. He dropped like a stone.

  “Thanks,” Smoke said to Van Horne, who was still aiming his smoking Winchester at the men below.

  “Don’t mention it,” Bill replied, impressing Smoke with his coolness under fire.

  Soon, the three attackers still remaining alive were trussed up and tied with their backs to trees.

  Bear Tooth disappeared inside the lean-to, and reappeared moments later with his arm around a man with flaming red hair and beard and a bloody left shoulder.

  “Red Bingham, you old beaver,” Smoke said, grinning. “I heard you were dead.”

  “Naw, he ain’t dead,” Bear Tooth said as he helped Red to sit down next to the fire. “He just smells that way.”

  Red turned his bright blue eyes to Bear Tooth. “You can talk. At least I took’n me a bath last spring, which is more’n I can say fer some.”