Quest of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Van Horne noticed Bear Tooth and Red Bingham glancing nervously around the room and whispering to one another.

  “Bear Tooth, Red,” Van Horne asked, “is anything wrong?”

  “Uh, Bill, it’s just that we’re not used to eatin’ indoors,” Bear Tooth answered.

  “Yeah,” Red added, “it don’t seem natural somehow.”

  “But you ate in the car on the train,” Pearlie said.

  “That was different,” Bear said. “Then it was just us eating, kind’a like being in camp with your partners.” He looked around. “Here there’s a whole passel of strangers around watchin’ us eat.”

  Louis, who was holding a glass of real brandy in his hands, not the homemade variety he’d had at the Dog Hole, looked up as he swirled the amber liquid around the snifter. “Oh, you’ll get used to it, boys. The only difference from eating outdoors is there are far fewer bugs to bother you while you eat.”

  Van Horne laughed. “Yes, but don’t get too used to it, men. We’re going to be taking off in a day or two for the wilds of Canada to do some surveying.”

  He looked up as a tall, slim man wearing buckskins entered the door to the restaurant and looked around. Van Horne held up his hand and waved him over.

  As he approached their table, Smoke noticed he had the sun-wrinkled face and observant eyes of a mountain man, but unlike most of those he’d known in the past, the man’s beard was short and well trimmed.

  “Gentlemen,” Van Horne said, getting to his feet and holding out his hand to the newcomer, “this is Tom Wilson. He’s the leader of our surveying crew.”

  “So, you’re to be our new boss, huh?” Smoke said with a smile as he got to his feet and held out his hand.

  Wilson returned the smile, though it looked like it was an effort. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said, taking Smoke’s hand.

  “I’m Smoke Jensen,” Smoke said, and then he introduced the others at the table, who all nodded and then went back to their food and drink.

  Wilson’s eyes took in the other mountain men at the table, and then moved over Smoke’s broad shoulders and muscled arms. “You boys all look like you got some hair on you,” Wilson said, and then he hesitated, glancing at Louis and his fancy clothes and at Cal and Pearlie. “At least, most of you do,” he added with a half smile.

  Smoke took his meaning. “Oh, by the way, Tom, don’t let Louis’s clothes or the boys’ young years fool you,” Smoke said. “They’ve all been tested by fire, and I’ll guarantee you they’re up to the job.”

  Wilson stared at Smoke for a moment, his eyes narrowed, and then he snapped his fingers. “I’ve been trying to remember where I’ve heard the name Smoke Jensen before,” he said.

  “Oh?” Smoke inquired.

  “Yeah. It was last year, right after the spring thaw, and I was up in the mountains just north of here checking out the elk herds, fixin’ to do some hunting, when I ran across one of the oldest men I’ve ever met who wasn’t sitting in a rocking chair on a porch somewhere.”

  Smoke’s heart began to beat rapidly, knowing what was coming. “He give you a name?”

  Wilson grinned. “Yeah, the old beaver said he was called Preacher.”

  The name Preacher got the immediate attention of all of the mountain men at the table, Preacher being a legend among them.

  Wilson reached behind him, took a chair from a nearby table, and pulled it around, sitting on it backward with his arms folded over the back of the chair. “Well, one thing led to another and we made a camp together up there in the High Lonesome. This Preacher, he made me some coffee that’d take the hair off a bear hide, and then he proceeded to tell me he’d come all the way up here to Canada from down Colorado way ’cause it was getting too crowded in the mountains down there. He said you couldn’t hardly trap any beaver for tripping over pilgrims and such all the time.”

  “Jesus,” Bear Tooth whispered, staring at Wilson. “Ol’ Preacher must be in his eighties at least by now.”

  “I’d just assumed the old codger had holed up somewheres an’ died,” Red Bingham said, equally awed by Wilson’s story.

  Wilson nodded. “You’re right, men. Preacher had to be at least eighty, and he looked like he’d been rode hard and put up wet besides. Anyway, some of the tales he told me I put down to typical mountain-man exaggeration, especially the ones about a young pilgrim he’d met years ago who was fast as greased lightning with a handgun and, to hear Preacher tell it, as hard as an anvil.”

  Rattlesnake Bob nodded. “Well, sonny boy, if’n he was talking about Smoke here, you can take what he said to heart, no matter how outrageous it sounded.”

  Smoke smiled and shook his head. “I wish I’d been here to see him. We had some fun times in the old days, hairy as hell, but fun nevertheless.”

  Wilson pulled a canvas pouch out of the pocket of his buckskins and began to build himself a cigarette. When it was done, he screwed it into the corner of his mouth and lit it with a lucifer he struck on his pants leg.

  As he let the smoke drift out of his nostrils, he looked at Smoke. “If half of what he said about you was true, Smoke, it’s gonna be a pleasure to ride the peaks with you.”

  Smoke laughed. “And if it’s not?”

  Wilson shrugged. “Then you probably won’t make it across the mountains, and neither will the rest of you.” He took a deep drag, leaving the cigarette in his mouth as he talked around the smoke. “Boys, the mountains in Colorado ain’t nothing compared to what you’re gonna see up here. Besides the Stony Indians, who’d just as soon scalp you and eat your heart as to look at you, we got just about ever kind of wild creature ever born with fangs and claws up here. There ain’t been more’n a handful of whites to even try to cross the territory where we’re going, an’ half of them never lived to tell about what they’d seen.”

  “If the surveying job is so difficult and dangerous, why did you agree to ramrod the team?” Louis asked, a bit angry at the way Wilson was talking down to them as if they’d never been in dangerous situations before.

  Wilson shrugged. “Hell, I was gonna be up in the mountains anyway, since that’s what I do, so why not take the railroad’s money for doing what comes natural?”

  He hesitated, looking around the table. “The question is, since you all seem to have at least most of your senses, why have you agreed to take such a job on?”

  Smoke stared at Wilson, wondering why the man had so little regard for others. “Probably for the same reason Preacher told you he was up here,” Smoke said. “Colorado’s getting crowded and most of the Indians have been either wiped out or beaten into submission. And like you say, we’d be up in the mountains anyway, so why not see some new country and get paid for it?”

  Wilson nodded as he stubbed the cigarette out in an ashtray on the table. “Good enough then. I’ll see you men ’bout sunup in the morning, and we’ll get started going toward the mountains to see if we can find a pass for Mr. Van Horne to drive his iron horse through.”

  “By the way, Tom,” Smoke said, “whatever happened to Preacher after your camp together?”

  Wilson shook his head and smiled. “Hell if I know. When I woke up the next morning, the coffee was made and there was no sign of the old man. He’d vanished into the woods as if he’d never even been there. I tried to track him, and believe me when I say I can track a fart in a windstorm, and I couldn’t even tell which way he’d gone.”

  Smoke smiled. “That’s Preacher, all right. He once told me he could walk across mud without leaving a print, and damned if I don’t believe it.”

  14

  The next morning, Smoke got up and dressed and went to wake the rest of the group just before dawn. After collecting Cal and Pearlie and Louis, he knocked on the doors to the other four mountain men’s hotel rooms and received no answer.

  Cautiously, he opened the door to hear Tooth and Red Bingham’s room and entered, his hand near the butt of his pistol. There was no telling what trouble the men might have gotten into during the
night. They were, after all, not used to city life and its many dangers. As he looked around, he was surprised to find that the beds hadn’t been slept in. He moved further into the room, and he heard the sound of voices coming in through the open window.

  He slipped his pistol out of its holster and eased over to the window and peered out, finding Red and Bear Tooth just getting out of sleeping blankets they’d set up on the balcony running alongside the building.

  He shook his head, smiling as he stuck his Colt back into its holster on his right hip. It was just like mountain men to prefer sleeping outside on a balcony under the stars to a soft, comfortable bed inside.

  “Morning, boys,” Smoke said, leaning his head out of the window.

  Bear Tooth looked up, yawning and stretching. “Howdy, Smoke. Looks like it’s gonna be a humdinger of a day,” he said, peering up at a clear sky still full of stars.

  “I reckon it does,” Smoke agreed. “Didn’t you boys find it a mite chilly out here last night? The temperature must’ve been well below zero.”

  Bear looked over at Red and shrugged. “I didn’t notice it being particularly cold. Did you, Red?”

  Red didn’t bother to answer, just shook his head and yawned.

  Smoke leaned a little further out of the window and looked to the side. Just down the balcony, in front of the window to their room, lay Rattlesnake Bob and Bobcat Bill. At least Smoke thought it was them. It was hard to tell, for they were burrowed deep in heavy blankets and only their outlines could be seen.

  He jerked his head to the side. “Better go wake up those slugabeds down the way, or before long we’ll be burning daylight,” he said to Bear Tooth.

  Bear Tooth grinned. “Them always were lazy layabouts, ever since I knowed ’em,” he said as he got to his feet and walked down the balcony.

  He stirred the sleeping form of Rattlesnake Bob, and was rewarded with the barrel of an old Walker Colt poking out of the blankets at his face.

  He chuckled and pushed the gun aside with his foot, “Don’t go pointin’ that hogleg at me ’less’n you want it shoved where the sun don’t shine, Rattlesnake.”

  “Then don’t go kickin’ at me with them dirty boots of your’n, you polecat!” Rattlesnake growled in a phlegmy voice as he struggled up out of his blankets.

  “Hell, somebody’s got to do it, else you’d likely sleep till noon, an’ Smoke says breakfast is waiting.”

  “Did I hear somebody say breakfast?” Bobcat Bill said, jumping up out of his blankets and onto his feet. He was instantly awake, a trait soon learned by mountain men, else they didn’t survive long in the wilderness.

  As usual, all of the mountain men had gone to sleep in their clothes, as they did out in the High Lonesome.

  Rattlesnake grimaced. “Just like in camp, boys,” he said to Bear. “Bobcat don’t hardly ever stir from his blankets till I’ve got breakfast on the fire.”

  Bobcat looked over at his partner and grinned. “An’ I do so appreciate the fine cuisine you fix too, podna,” he growled. “Especially that stew you make that’s just got to have skunk meat in it.”

  * * *

  In less than an hour, they were all sitting around a table in the huge mess tent in the rail yard, stuffing down flapjacks and eggs and bacon and beans as fast as they could. Pearlie had even taken a few sinkers and slathered thick white gravy over them, and was eating them as well.

  Van Horne appeared, unshaven, his clothes rumpled and untidy.

  “What happened to you, Bill?” Smoke asked as Van Horne grabbed a mug of coffee and drank it down.

  “This is a mite too early for me, Smoke. I usually wait until at least dawn to crawl out of bed”—he smiled—“but then, I also usually work until after midnight when I’m in the middle of laying track.”

  “Where’s Tom Wilson?” Smoke asked. “I figured he’d have his tent here near the camp.”

  Van Horne shook his head. “Not Tom. He’s not exactly what I’d call the most sociable fellow I’ve ever met. He usually makes his own camp a ways away from the rest of the crew. Says it’s just about all he can do to stand other people’s company all day without having to listen to them snore all night.”

  “You mean he just ups and heads off when the day’s work is done?” Cal asked, his mouth full of bacon.

  “That’s about the size of it,” Van Horne answered. “Ol’ Tom’s a real loner.”

  “It ain’t that I’m a loner,” Wilson said from the tent door as he entered and picked up a plate. “It’s just that I ain’t found all that many people I enjoy being around much is all.”

  Cal watched wide-eyed as Tom piled on even more food than Pearlie had. When the mountain man sat down, Cal said, “Jiminy, Mr. Wilson, I ain’t never seen nobody eat more’n Pearlie here.”

  Wilson looked up from pouring a half quart of maple syrup on his pancakes. “One thing you learn out here in the High Lonesome, young’un,” he said, “is to eat as much as you can whenever you got the chance, ’cause you never know when you’ll get your next chance to eat.”

  Cal laughed. “Heck fire, my friend Pearlie’s been following that advice as long as I’ve knowed him, an’ he don’t even live up in the mountains.”

  While they finished their breakfast, Van Horne pulled out a wrinkled hand-drawn map from his coat pocket. He handed the map to Smoke. “I’ve drawn a rough sketch of what we know about the mountain ranges to the north and west of Winnipeg, and I’ve penciled in a rough line where I want the tracks to go, with provisions, of course, for any detours we might have to make around peaks or valleys in the mountain range.”

  Tom Wilson glanced up from his food long enough to pull several sheets of paper from his breast pocket and pass them over to Smoke. “Here’s some more maps for you, Smoke. They detail several routes explored by others some years back.”

  Smoke looked at the maps. They were labeled with the names Dawson, Palliser, and Fleming. “Which of these do you think is the best bet to try, Tom?” he asked.

  “Won’t know till we get out there, but from what I’ve read in the journals of the men involved, I think Fleming’s more northern route offers the best chance of finding some passes through the Selkirk and Caribou Mountains.”

  Smoke grinned. “Then I guess we’ll try the northern routes first, assuming we can get through the snow-packs.”

  Wilson grunted. “And assuming we can find suitable portages across the rivers that dot the area.”

  “Rivers?” Pearlie asked, looking up from his breakfast for the first time since he sat down. “You mean we’re gonna have to cross freezing rivers on this”

  “’Less you can fly, boy, that’s about the size of it,” Wilson replied dryly.

  “Just how many men are you planning on taking with us on this little jaunt?” Louis asked as he sipped his after-breakfast coffee and smoked a long black cigar.

  Wilson paused in his eating. “Just three in addition to us here at the table. William and Thomas McCardell and Frank McCabe will be good men to have with us, I think. They’re experienced surveyors, and if we run into the Stony Indians, we’re gonna need every gun we can carry to get us through.”

  “Do you think there’s much chance of that?” Pearlie asked, a worried look on his face.

  Wilson looked at him and grinned. “Do you think there’s much chance of it snowing up here in the winter?” he asked in answer to Pearlie’s question. When Pearlie didn’t answer, he added, “It’s not a question of whether we run into the Indians, Pearlie, but of when it’s gonna happen.”

  “The trick to fightin’ Injuns, young’un,” Bear said around his food, “is to see them ’fore they see you, ’cause if’n it’s the other way ’round, there won’t be much fightin’ goin’ on, just a lotta dyin’.”

  * * *

  While Smoke and his men were eating breakfast, Hammer Hammerick and his gang were stationed alongside the railroad tracks leading into Winnipeg, about ten miles out of the town.

  He’d worked out a plan to deal
with the Pinkerton men stationed on the train as guards, and he was anxious to see if it would work.

  He had his thirty men lined up in wooded areas on either side of the track. As the rails made a long, sweeping curve to the right, he’d had his men loosen the tracks just enough to derail the train, but leave them in place so the engineer wouldn’t see anything amiss. Each of his men had been supplied with several sticks of dynamite with fuses attached.

  As the engine made the curve, its wheels jumped the tack and the cars following began a crazy dance, waving back and forth and tipping first to one side and hen to the other as they ran off the tracks and onto the soft dirt alongside. The train soon completely derailed, sliding to the side and plowing twin furrows in the soft earth for over a hundred yards, before the engine and the cars immediately behind it slowly toppled to the side, rupturing the boiler with a loud explosion and great plumes of steam billowing into the chilly air.

  When the rest of the cars had come to a stop, Hammer and his men rode their horses out of the woods and galloped toward the disabled train, lighting fuses from cigars in their mouths and pitching them toward the cars containing the Pinkerton men, many of whom could be heard screaming in pain and terror from the piles of wreckage alongside the tracks.

  The wooden cars exploded into pieces, and men and horses on the train screamed in further agony as their bodies were ripped apart by the force of the explosions.

  Hammer reined his horse in next to the boxcar containing the large iron safe and the dead and wounded bodies of the Pinkerton agents lying scattered all around the ruined car amid body parts, blood, and dead horses.

  As he dismounted, he looked around at the men on the ground. There were over twenty men, some still alive, partially buried in the splintered pieces of wood from the car.

  He, like all of his men, had covered his face with a bandanna, so he didn’t feel the need to execute the wounded men, but he was careful to make sure none were in any shape to take a shot at him with the rifles most had nearby.