Blood of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “Don’t you tell me what to do, you goddamn raw-hider.”

  “We all were rawhiders when we first came here, Red,” another rancher said. “Even you. So you got no call to insult us.”

  “I’ll do just as I’ve always done,” the man popped back. “And that is whatever I damn well please”

  “Them days is over, Red,” a farmer spoke up. “You’re the only rancher in the area that don’t buy my vegetables and bacon and hams, and whose men still ride roughshod over my place. It’ll not happen again. I tell you that face to face.”

  Red pointed a finger at the farmer, dressed in overalls and low-heeled boots. The finger was shaking and his voice was thick with barely controlled emotion. “You don’t talk to me like that, Jergenson. I don’t take lip from a goddamn squatter.”

  Smoke sat and listened. With any kind of luck, he would not have to draw on the hair-trigger-tempered rancher. He felt that the locals were just about to deal with Red Lee. And maybe he’d been wrong about the foreman, Jim Sloane. The man was slowly edging away from his boss, occasionally looking pleadingly in Smoke’s direction.

  Smoke sat drinking coffee, waiting. He hated two-bit tyrants like Red Lee. He’d had a gutfull of them as a boy, back in Missouri, working their hard-scrabble rocky farm from can-see to can’t-see while his daddy was off in the war and his mother lay dying.

  Red suddenly stopped his cursing and shouting and turned on Smoke. “Stand up, gunfighter,” he said.

  “Don’t do it, Red,” Smoke told him. “Just settle down and be a good citizen from now on. Can’t you see that the others are willing to forgive and forget?”

  “I said get up, damn your eyes!”

  “Try me, Red,” the rancher named Jackson said.

  Red turned, disbelief in his eyes. “You, Jackson? You want to try me?”

  “I reckon it’s come to that, Red,” the rancher said calmly, standing with his feet spread and his right hand close to the butt of his six-gun.

  “I’m out of this,” Jim Sloane said. “Red, man … come on. Let’s go home.”

  “You’re fired, you son-of-a-bitch!” Red shouted.

  “You’re hired,” a rancher told Sloane. “You’re a good cowboy, Jim.”

  “Draw, damn you!” Red shouted to Jackson.

  “I’ll not start this,” the rancher said.

  Red’s temper exploded and he grabbed iron. He got off the first shot, the lead splintering wood at Jackson’s feet. Jackson didn’t miss. His shot took Red in the center of his chest and the man staggered back, an amazed look on his face.

  “Why … you shot me,” he said.

  Smoke poured another cup of coffee.

  Red tried to speak again but his mouth was suddenly filled with blood. He slowly sank to his knees on the fresh-mopped floor and his gun slipped from his fingers to clatter on the boards. Red knelt there, looking at the pistol.

  “It didn’t have to be,” Jackson said.

  “Yes, it did,” another rancher disagreed.

  The words were very faint to Red Lee as the world began darkening around him. This just couldn’t be happening to him. Not to him.

  “I tried to tell him,” Jim said. “Over the past months I’ve tried and tried to talk sense to him. He just wouldn’t listen.”

  “I know you have,” Jackson said.

  “The day of the tyrant is over,” Jergenson said. “I knew it had to happen.”

  “You be sure and save me a couple of them hams come this fall,” a rancher told the farmer. “They was mighty fine eatin’.”

  “I will,” Jergenson said.

  “Hams?” Red Lee gasped.

  “Has he got any kin?” the barber asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Jim Sloane replied. “His wife took the kids and run off years ago. Right after he beat her real bad.”

  “She had it … comin’,” Red said.

  Jackson punched out the empty and loaded up. “I don’t have much use for a man who’d beat a woman,” he said.

  Red Lee fell over on his face.

  “Hell, now I got to mop the damn floor,” the bartender said.

  Five

  Smoke rode out just as the sun was beginning to peep over the ragged crags of the mountains. He had not looked forward to this trip in the first place, and so far his feelings had certainly proved accurate.

  He was glad to put the little no-named village behind him as he rode north toward the mining town of Red Light.

  By the end of the day, he was deep in the mountains and climbing higher through the twisting and winding passes. He’d been here before, back when he was a boy, roaming the wilderness with the mountain man, Preacher. He remembered a quiet little stream and was looking for it. Smoke loved the high country. It was here amid the splendor of the mountains that he felt most at home, most at peace with himself and his surroundings.

  He did not dwell on the death of the rancher, Red Lee. To Smoke’s way of thinking, the deaths of bullies and those who took from society more than they gave were no more meaningful than the hole a man leaves after sticking his finger into a quiet creek. Nothing.

  Smoke Jensen did not know how many men he himself had killed. He knew the figure was very high. If he never had to draw a gun on another man, it would suit him just fine. But if he had to kill again, a bully, a rapist, a murderer, a man who rode roughshod over the rights of decent people, it would not cause him to lose a second’s sleep.

  Courts were fine and dandy. A needful thing, he supposed, to protect those who could not protect themselves. Smoke needed no such protection. He could take care of himself, his loved ones, his property. And if anyone violated anything he loved or protected or owned, they would have to face him, and courts be damned. His was a simple code, one if followed by all men would make the world a simpler place in which to live: You leave me alone, I will leave you alone. You have a right to a personal opinion, just as I do. But no more than I do. If you violate my space, you will have to fight me. Smoke knew he was an anachronism. He knew that courts and lawyers and judges were responsible for making the world a safer place, but a much more complicated one. And he felt it didn’t have to be.

  Smoke rode his own trails, followed his own code of conduct, and tried to live a good life. And he did not give a damn whether others liked it or disliked it.

  He found the spot where he and Ol’ Preacher had camped so many years ago, and to his delight it had not been disturbed by the destructive hand of man. He made his camp and fished for his supper and was just washing up the skillet when a man halloed the camp.

  “I’m friendly,” the man called. “I done et, so you don’t have to feed me, but I sure would like a cup of that coffee I smell.”

  “Come on in,” Smoke called.

  The man was not young, probably in his late sixties, Smoke guessed. A miner, to judge by the equipment his mule carried. Smoke pointed to the coffeepot and the man squatted down and poured himself some, using his own tin cup, which had certainly seen better days.

  “Leavin’ Red Light,” the miner volunteered. “ ’Tain’t no fit place to be no more. Done gone lawless and mean. If you’re headin’ that way, mister, I’d suggest you give it a second thought.”

  “I was thinking about checking it out.”

  The miner shook his head. “Then you’re headin’ into trouble.” He eyeballed Smoke. “Although I’d allow as to say you look like a man who could handle ’bout anything that was throwed at you.” He looked at Smoke’s Colt. “That ain’t new,” he remarked. “But it’s seen some use,” he added drily.

  “Some.”

  “I ain’t never gonna go back up yonder, so I can tell you who to look out for and what’s wrong with the place,” the miner said. “And that’s easy. Everything is wrong. Don’t trust the sheriff or none of his deputies. They’re all in the pocket of Major Cosgrove, who’s a thief and a murderer and an all around no-good. He talks fancy and lives in a fine home. But he’s no-’count. Red Light’s a boomin’ town now, and m
ean to the core. Must be seven, eight hundred people all crowded up there. It’ll stay that way ’til the gold is gone. Then there won’t be fifty people left. Jack Biggers is the big rancher in the area. He’s just as mean and no good as Sheriff Bowers and Major Cosgrove. As are the men who work for him. It’s just not a good place to tarry, son. I’d give it some thought.”

  “How about other ranchers in the valley?”

  “You know about the valley, huh? They ain’t but two other ranchers. Jack Biggers and Fat Fosburn. Jenny Jensen and an old man named Van Horn is holdin’ the kid’s ranch agin’ long odds. The powers that be want the girl’s ranch. The other ranchers was burned out, run out, or killed. I fear for the girl’s life, I do. For them men would as soon kill a girl as shoot a snake. She come into all her ma’s property. But most of it ain’t fitten for a decent girl to be associated with.”

  “Oh?”

  “No, sir. It ain’t. All but the ranch. It’s a beautiful little ranch in that valley. And my, my, it do have good water and graze. But Jack Biggers wants that property for hisn. And what Jack Biggers wants, he gets.” He finished his coffee and stood up, moving toward his horse and mule. “Well, I thank you for the hospitality. I got me a favorite place ’bout three, four miles down the way. But I smelled that coffee and got to salivatin’. See you, young feller.”

  Before Smoke could ask another question, the miner had swung into the saddle and was gone. Smoke went to his pack and began removing what he felt he might need, including a ten-gauge Colt revolving shotgun that he had had for many years. He had sent it back to the factory in Hartford to have it reworked and refinished and they’d done a bang-up job. It was originally a 27-inch barrel and he’d sawed that off to within a few inches of the forestock. At close range it could clear an entire room of all living things. The cylinder held five rounds, and Smoke had loaded them and a sackful of other shells himself.

  He took his pistols and cleaned them carefully, loading them up full. For the time being, he would not wear his left hand holster but instead tuck the second pistol behind his gunbelt. He had a hunch — unless somebody recognized him, he could, for a time, ride in and be known as K. Jensen with nobody the wiser. At least it was worth a try.

  He cleaned and loaded his rifle and rolled up in his blankets and went to sleep. He wondered what kind of business his sister might have had that would not be “fitten” for a young lady to go near.

  Smoke topped a rise and looked down at the town of Red Light. He took an immediate dislike to the place. The streets were crooked and twisty and narrow, the buildings all jammed up against one another. Like most boom towns, it was a mishmash of buildings and tents and wagons. Even from where he sat above the town he could hear the shrill and false laughter of hurdy-gurdy girls, busy separating miners from their gold dust and nuggets, and behind it all the banging of tinny-sounding pianos.

  Smoke had deliberately not shaved his upper lip since leaving the ranch, and his mustache was nearly grown out, since he had a naturally heavy beard. The mustache made him look several years older and a hell of a lot meaner. The mustache was beginning to droop down toward his chin and made Smoke look like he’d just come off the hoot-owl trail.

  “All right, Buck,” Smoke said. “Let’s go check out this dump.”

  The livery was on the edge of town and Smoke reined in and swung down. A young boy of about thirteen came out and pulled up short at the sight of the huge, mean-eyed horse.

  “I got a stall for you, mister, but you’re gonna have to handle that hoss yourself.”

  “What’s the matter, Jimmy?” a loudmouth hollered from a boardwalk so new some of the boards had not yet lost their sawmill color. “You want me to show you how to handle a hoss?”

  “Nick Norman,” Jimmy whispered. “He’s a really bad one, mister. A bully.”

  “Tell him if he thinks he’s man enough to handle this horse, come on and try,” Smoke returned the whisper. “Don’t worry about him coming back at you. He’ll be so stove-up he won’t be able to walk for six months. If he lives.”

  “Well, why don’t you come show me, then, Nick,” Jimmy called.

  “I’ll do that,” the loudmouth said, stepping off the boardwalk. “And then I’ll give you a thrashing for being smart-mouthed with me.”

  Nick looked at Smoke and said, “Get out of the way. I’ll larn your horse some manners.”

  Smoke smiled and pointed at the dangling reins.

  Nick jerked up the reins hard and said, “Come on, you ugly son-of-a-jerk.”

  Buck bit him, clamping down with his big teeth. Nick screamed as the arm was lacerated and the blood flowed. Nick jerked out a pistol to shoot the horse and Buck butted him, knocking the man to the ground, the pistol sliding away in the mud. Nick grabbed up a heavy board and got to his feet. He reared back to strike Buck and Buck reared up and came down with both shod feet. One hoof made a terrible mess of Nick’s face and the other smashed a shoulder, the sound of the breaking bones clearly audible. Nick lay in the mud, badly hurt and unconscious.

  A man came running up, pushing through the gathering crowd. He wore a star on his chest.

  Smoke pointed to the bloody and broken Nick and said, “You’d better get your resident loudmouth to a doctor, deputy. He’s hurt pretty bad.”

  The deputy started to say something about the best thing to do would be to shoot the damn horse. But he bit back the words and closed his mouth. He didn’t like the look in this big stranger’s eyes. And to make matters worse, that damn big horse was looking at him, too, ears all laid back and walleyed mean. The deputy had seen a few killer horses in his time, and this was definitely one of them.

  Smoke petted Buck for a few seconds and then picked up the reins, starting inside the huge barn.

  “Where do you think you’re goin’?” the deputy called.

  “To stable my horse,” Smoke called over his shoulder. “You have any objection?” Before leaving town, Smoke had wired a friend of his, a judge down in Denver, and asked if his Deputy U.S. Marshal’s commission was still valid.

  “That was a lifetime appointment, Smoke. You think you might need that badge soon?” he’d asked him.

  “Maybe,” Smoke wired back.

  “You have the full weight of the United States Government behind you, my boy,” the judge had wired.

  “All the weight I need I carry on my hip,” Smoke closed the key.

  “By God, I might!” the deputy hollered, losing his temper. “I don’t like your attitude, mister.”

  Smoke dug in his saddlebags and pinned on the badge before stripping off saddle and bridle and pouring grain into a feed trough.

  “Did you hear me, damn it?” the deputy yelled, as the crowd outside the livery swelled, the small mob making no effort to assist the unconscious Nick Norman. “I said,” the deputy shouted, “do you hear me, you damn saddlebum?”

  Smoke hesitated for a moment, then took off the U.S. Marshal’s badge and put it in his pocket. Might be more fun without it, he thought.

  “Git out here and look at me!” the deputy shouted, now reenforced by two other badge-toting men.

  Smoke made sure his second gun was hidden by his coat and then he walked out of the gloom of the livery to face the three so-called lawmen.

  “All right,” Smoke said, as the mob of men and painted women fell silent. “I’m looking at you. But if I have to look at you for very long, I’ll lose my appetite.” He glanced at the other two. “And that includes you, too.”

  The three men looked at each other, not quite sure how to handle this situation. As deputies under Sheriff Bowers, they were accustomed to bullying their way around the area, and having people kowtow to them. But this stranger didn’t seem a bit impressed by their badges.

  They didn’t realize that Smoke immediately knew that the three of them combined wouldn’t make a pimple on a good lawman’s butt.

  “We’re deputies,” one of the three said.

  “Wonderful,” Smoke told them. “Go get
a lost cat out of a tree.”

  Jimmy the stableboy could not hide his grin.

  One of the deputies noticed it and flushed. “I’ll slap that smirk offen your face, boy.”

  “You’ll do it when Hell freezes over,” Smoke told him.

  The deputy cut his eyes to the big stranger. “You don’t talk to me lak ’at, mister. I got me a notion to put you in jail.”

  “Why don’t you try?” Smoke said softly.

  “All right!” a voice shouted from behind the crowd. “Get out of the damn way and let me through.”

  The crowd parted and a big man stepped into the small clearing in front of the livery. He was about the same size as Smoke and did not appear to have an ounce of fat on him. He was clean-shaven and smelled of cologne. He wore a very ornate star pinned to his coat and at first glance appeared to be a man used to getting his own way. He wore two guns, low and tied down.

  “I’m Sheriff Bowers,” the man said, fixing his gaze on Smoke. “What’s going on here? What happened to Nick?”

  “Nick got rough with my horse,” Smoke told him. “My horse didn’t like him or the treatment and let him know about it. Then this loudmouth piece of crap wearing a badge showed up and I don’t like him. He threatened this boy here.” He pointed to Jimmy. “That tells me what type of sorry trash he is. So, Sheriff, if you own him, you’d better put a leash and a muzzle on him.” Smoke was feeling the old wildness settle on him. It was a cold sensation. He had felt the same emotion when he’d entered the old silver camp years back, hunting the men who had raped and killed his wife and killed his baby son. Smoke had left some fourteen-odd men dead in the streets.

  This trip had turned sour from the git-go and Smoke was feeling more and more of the old wildness fill him.

  Sheriff Bowers read the warning in Smoke’s eyes and took in the man’s boots and clothing. The boots were handmade and expensive. The coat was handmade to fit the man’s huge shoulders and arms. The .44 he wore at his side was old, but well-cared-for, and it had seen a lot of use. It was not fancy, and that spoke volumes to the sheriff.