Rage of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Travis motioned to the two unwounded men with him that he wanted them ready. They nodded silently, unseen by Smoke Jensen. Then Travis rose from behind the mail sorting frame and rushed the door, sixgun blazing.

  Smoke Jensen shot him in the hip. Travis spun, stumbled, then swung back from his waist and fired at Smoke. A second round punched into the exposed belly of Travis. He doubled over as his underlings rushed past.

  From behind Smoke came the roar of Quincannon’s revolver. One of the attacking outlaws cried out and pitched through the opening. He landed on his head. Smoke could hear the dry stick crack of the bones in the wounded man’s neck. The other loomed over him and a bullet cut a hot wind past Smoke’s head a moment before he returned fire.

  An expression of sheer surprise lighted the face of the man Smoke shot. He remained upright, made a desperate effort to recock his Colt, and then keeled over to one side and out of sight in the express car.

  “I ain’t armed,” came a cry from the man Smoke had wounded earlier. “I’m comin’ out. I’ll crawl on my belly.”

  “Good enough,” Smoke advised him. “Make it slow.” He turned to Liam Quincannon. “We’ll secure this one and head for the train. You can be sure there’s a few of them looting the passengers.”

  “Right ye are, Smoke.” Quincannon swung around at the rumble of fast hooves, his expression washing to one of gloomy resignation. “B’God, they’re some of ’em comin' back.”

  Six

  Six of the Waldron gang had recovered their horses and now rode at a gallop back to the train. Laying along the necks of their mounts, they fired shots at the strangers who stood outside the express car. They risked no harm to any of their own, for one of the men they shot at wore the uniform of a conductor for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad.

  A spurt of smoke came from the weapon in the conductor’s hand and one horse let out a wild whinny when the slug cut through the tip of its ear. The bullet did greater harm to the rider as it entered the top of his shoulder and splintered the collarbone. Pink froth formed on his lips as the damage it had done took effect.

  Before they had closed half the distance, he sagged and fell from his mount, one lung filled with blood. The other five reined up short when the other intruder opened up. Three rounds from Smoke Jensen emptied three saddles. A single bandit remained when Liam Quincannon took aim on the hapless man’s chest. Wisely he threw up his hands, sixgun held between thumb and forefinger.

  Behind him, one of the wounded came to his knees and threw a shot at the big hombre in the expensive suit coat. His slug snapped the hat from Smoke Jensen’s head. It didn’t effect his aim any, which his assailant found out a split second later as hot liquid fire exploded in his chest. The lights went out for him and he died without ever knowing who had shot him.

  “We had better find out where the rest are on the train,” Smoke prodded, as he reloaded his .45 Frontier.

  “Right ye are, Smoke. I’ll tell the engineer to put her in reverse once we get aboard. That should give us a hair’s edge on them spalpeen bastids.”

  Laughing, Smoke Jensen trotted along the stalled cars toward the last in line. Liam soon joined him and the chuffling engine hissed to life. The drivers spun as Smoke mounted the steps to the last Pullman. Liam Quincannon came behind and paused long enough to give the hand signal to go to full reverse.

  Space between cars compressed as the twenty-eight-ton locomotive began to overcome inertia. Wheels turned smoothly in the trucks and slowly the train rolled backward. Inside the Pullman, anxious faces greeted them with new apprehension.

  “We’ve already been robbed,” a pinch-faced woman accused. “We’ve nothing more to give you.” Then she saw Liam Quincannon over Smoke Jensen’s shoulder and her jaw sagged. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I thought, we thought, you were more of them.”

  “They went there,” a small boy announced, a finger pointed to the rear door.

  “Hush, Billy,” his mother scolded. “We don’t want any more trouble.”

  Smoke Jensen cut his eyes over his shoulder. “What do you think, Liam?”

  “No sense in blunderin’ right into them, I says.” “Agreed. I think I’ll take to the rooftops again. You back me up from the vestibule once it’s cleared.”

  “Denver and Rio Grande,” Buck Waldron read into the initials inscribed above the door of the private car. “Well, boys, I wonder if that old fart himself is in here.”

  “I thought this was the Santa Fe,” Rucker remarked doubtfully.

  “It is. They’re haulin’ ol' Colonel Drew along as a courtesy,” Waldron explained. “If that’s so, we can make us a passel more money selling his carcass back to his railroad.”

  “Door’s locked,” Dorne announced. “Should I shoot it off?”

  “No. Rich folks are more careful of their hides. Might be we can talk ’em into openin’ it for us,” Buck Waldron suggested.

  Fitting action to his pronouncement, Waldron stepped forward and banged on the glass of the door. “Open up in there!” he bellowed. “You hear me? Open up right now!”

  Inside, a thoroughly demoralized Thomas Henning wrung his hands and stared along the passageway toward the front of the car. The walls of the compartments and kitchen partly obscured the glass panel. He could not be certain how many outlaws had clustered there. All he knew for sure was that they were in desperate trouble. Nervously he slid his green gaze over onto the woman he now had doubts was indeed related to John Reynolds.

  How could she lower herself enough even to touch a gun, let alone carry one in her purse? His ingrained loathing for any weapons blinded him to the fact that their present circumstances might well account for it. Why, any civilized person would simply give the brutes what they wanted and let them be on their way.

  “God damn it, open this door!” Waldron roared.

  Thomas Henning turned in agitation. “Well, what do you propose to do?” he asked of Sally Jensen.

  “Exactly what Smoke said to do. We stay here, safe behind that door,” Sally answered calmly. “Although it is too late for you to lock yourselves in your compartment. They’d see you going there and it wouldn’t buy us anything.”

  “Then I think the reasonable thing to do is open up and let them in before they get any angrier,” Thomas offered primly.

  “Thomas, I don’t know how it’s done where you come from,” Sally began patiently. “But out here, when a person lies down and rolls on his back, he’s likely to be kicked in the belly.”

  Blanching, Thomas swallowed hard. “That’s crudely put, but colorful. What has it to do with our present situation?”

  “Everything,” Sally snapped, her patience exhausted.

  Right then the car gave a lurch and began to roll backward. From the vestibule came another furious shout. “Open up or we’ll kill everyone in there.”

  Priscilla clutched at her husband’s arm, which she noticed had developed a marked tremble. Her lips took on the shape of her disillusionment. She cut her eyes to Sally Jensen. “Do they mean it?”

  “Possibly,” Sally answered curtly. “All the more reason we delay them as long as possible. It wasn’t any outlaw started up the train. Smoke will be here soon,” she advised confidently.

  “It won’t do us any good,” Thomas blurted in an anguished wail. He broke free of his wife and all but trotted along the passageway toward the door. Sally started after him, then held back. Maybe she should shoot the little coward . . . One look at the stricken face of Priscilla Henning disabused her of that idea.

  “Come on, Priss. We have some planning to do, and some playacting.”

  In the parlor section of the private car, Sally explained what she intended while she hid her Colt Lightning between the cushions of a plush loveseat. Only seconds later, a jumble of voices overrode the frightened bleat of Thomas Henning. Five hard-faced, scowling outlaws advanced along the narrow corridor toward where the women waited. The one in the lead roughly shoved Thomas along ahead of himself.

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nbsp; “We—ell, what do we have here?” the big, burly, barrelchested thug pushing Thomas drawled when they entered the parlor area and took in the two lovely women.

  “Who are you?” Sally Jensen demanded coldly.

  “More to the point, sister, who are you?” Buck Waldron asked through a leer.

  “Why, I’m . . . Sally, Miss Priscilla’s maid.”

  Astonishingly, Waldron touched fingertips to the brim of his hat in polite acknowledgment. “Please to make your acquaintance, Sally.” His eyes narrowed. “Who’s Miss Priscilla?”

  “She . . .” Sally began, to be cut off by Priscilla.

  “That’s all right, Sally. I can answer for myself. I am Priscilla Henning. That’s my husband you were shoving around, you lout.” For the first time since he had betrayed them by opening the door, Priscilla got a look at Thomas. His hair was mussed and his eyes were wild. A thin line of blood ran down from a split lip. “What have you done to him?” she demanded hotly.

  Waldron produced a wicked chuckle. “We didn’t like the way he took his sweet time opening the door. So Lovell here gave him a lesson in manners.”

  “You brute!” Priscilla screeched, and made to rake Waldron’s face with her long nails.

  “No, Miss Priscilla,” Sally cautioned firmly. “It would only get you hurt also.”

  “You’ve got some smarts, Miss Sally,” Waldron offered.

  While Priscilla Henning recovered her demeanor, Sally bored hot blue eyes into Waldron. “You still haven’t told us your names. With those masks on, we don’t know a thing about you.”

  Rucker and Dorne snickered. “That’s the idea, Sally-gal,” Rucker said, as though informing her of something she did not know.

  “Don’t see any harm in it, boys,” Waldron proclaimed. “M’name’s Buck Waldron. This is part of my gang. We rob trains for a living.”

  “How odd,” Priscilla gave him. “Why do you rob trains?”

  Buck Waldron shrugged. “Because they’re where the money is.”

  Wincing at his atrocious grammar, Priscilla attempted to ignore the lewd stares of the other four. Sally Jensen tried again to bait Buck Waldron.

  “I’m sure it takes men of abounding courage to menace two helpless young women.”

  Buck scratched behind one ear. “Sally, you don’t talk like a maid. You sound more like someone used to giving a maid orders.”

  Sally lowered her eyes and backed off. She had gone too far, she realized. “I suppose that after a number of years listening to my mistress’s orders, I’ve taken some of her ways of speaking.”

  “There’s somethin’ rotten about people who have servants,” Waldron declared in a rare philosophical moment. “Enough of this,” he dismissed their testy confrontation. “Tell us where the valuables are kept and we’ll help ourselves.”

  “There’s nothing, really,” Sally said, as she moved casually to the loveseat where she had concealed the .38 Colt.

  “People like your ‘mistress,’” Waldron sneered the word Sally had used, “don’t travel without a lot of fussy stuff. That much I know. So, Sally-gal, be real good and tell us.”

  Sally held her breath as she sank into the cushion. She sighed it out before answering, indicating her surrender. “Anything you might want can be found in their compartment.”

  “Sally!” Priscilla cried in alarm at her newfound friend’s betrayal.

  “Number Four,” Sally concluded, without a blink of an eye.

  Silently, Sally prayed that Priscilla would not let relief flood over her face and give away the ruse. Surely, now that the train ran backward, Smoke would be here soon, she told herself. She tensed herself, primed for the right moment to bring her Lightning into play.

  “Dorne, go get it,” Waldron commanded.

  “I—ah—I got somethin’ else in mind, Buck. Here’s a tasty young thing just beggin’ to be loved proper. Stands to reason this sorry excuse of a husband can’t satisfy her.” “And you figure you can?” Waldron taunted.

  “I know I can,” Dorne riposted hotly. “Gimme a chance and I’ll prove it.”

  Buck Waldron considered that a moment. “Lovell, go fetch the jewels and cash. Go ahead, Dorne, have your try.”

  “No!” Thomas Henning shouted suddenly, the by-play between the robbers registering on his dulled mind at last. He leaped to his feet and rushed at the one called Dorne.

  Grinning, Drone waited until the slightly built Thomas close in to a suitable distance. Then he unloaded a hard-knuckled right uppercut that came out of the cellar. It closed Thomas’s rage-distorted mouth with a loud clop. The handsome young fashion plate stopped his charge in midstride as his head snapped back and his longish light brown hair swayed alarmingly. His green eyes rolled up in their sockets. A terrified scream came from Priscilla.

  Thomas uttered a soft sigh and did a pratfall on the floor of the coach. Dorne turned away from him and started for Priscilla. Rucker left his place beside the bar and kicked Thomas in the chest to knock him flat. He twisted the waxed ends of his mustache on the face he revealed by removing his bandana and started in Sally’s direction.

  “I think I’ll try a sample of sweet little Sally here,” he advised through a leer.

  Smoke Jensen heard a terrified wail from inside the car on which he lay. Cautiously he worked his way to the dome of the skylight and peered inside. He saw the unconscious form of Thomas Henning stretched out below. Beyond, he observed the head and shoulders of a man nearly as big as himself, his back turned toward Smoke. Faintly, he heard soft, whimpering sounds rising from a point out of sight.

  Then he caught sight of Sally’s dress and legs on the small loveseat near a window on the right side. That decided him. Smoke moved with all the speed he could and still remain silent. When he reached the proper position, he hooked his boot toes over a protruding grab-iron and lowered himself head first, arms in the lead.

  Smoke popped into view, upside down, in the window nearest Sally. One man stood apart from the others in the room, his back to Smoke. The set of his shoulders indicated he waited impatiently for someone to appear out of the passageway. Smoke rotated his head and focused on two more hard cases who bent over the whimpering young Priscilla Henning. One of them fondled a breast, while the other pawed her body in obvious lust.

  Then Sally saw Smoke. With effort, she kept a straight face, but winked to acknowledge him. A man started toward Sally and wiped a bandana off his face. Immediately Smoke pulled himself out of sight. He used powerful muscles developed over years of hard, demanding labor to handwalk back up the side of the car. When he was able, he grabbed onto a protrusion and pushed himself upright.

  Swaying precariously, Smoke Jensen righted himself and got his boots under him. Stealthily he hastened to the place of his next planned appearance.

  Rucker stepped over the prostrate form of Thomas Henning and advanced on Sally. Banning joined him and had snatched her left forearm when a shadow filled the largely glassed portion of the door to the observation platform. He looked up with a startled expression when it slammed open.

  “Let go!” Smoke Jensen commanded with the voice of doom.

  In the same second, Sally Jensen yanked her hand from the space between the cushion and the arm of the loveseat. She took quick aim with the .38 Colt Lightning and squeezed the double, action trigger. The Long Colt cartridge, far superior to the .38 Smith and Wesson, held plenty of punch for the 142-grain, round-nosed slug that splatted into Rucker’s chest and punched through his heart.

  At the sound of the shot, Buck Waldron spun around in time to see his most trusted gunhawk bend forward as though making a courtly bow to the attractive woman beyond him. He saw the powder smoke rising between the two a moment before Banning reacted.

  Smoke Jensen had not anticipated the shot from Sally at that particular point, though he did accurately gauge who would be first to recover. His own .45 Colt sounded loudly in the confined space of the parlor. Banning jolted from the impact, but continued to raise his sixgun
. He got off a round that burned a painful swath along the outside point of Smoke’s shoulder.

  He still tried to cock his weapon when Smoke Jensen sent him off to join Rucker with a swift, sure safety shot right between the eyes. Recocking, he pivoted and put a round through the elbow of a slow-moving Dorne, who had turned from his lewd fondling of Priscilla Henning.

  Dorne howled and his shotgun went flying. Buck Waldron blinked at the incredible speed and accuracy and belatedly made his move.

  His hand halted its downward thrust when Sally Jensen swung the muzzle of her deadly Lightning to cover him. “Uh-uh,” she grunted tersely.

  Smoke Jensen had advanced two steps into the car by then and put another round into Dorne’s belly as the robber went for a holdout gun in the small of his back. Reflex powered Dorne’s legs as he did a backward leap that cleared the chair on which Priscilla sat. She let out a squeal of alarm.

  With the odds rapidly diminishing, Smoke centered his muzzle on Miller, the other outlaw who sought to have his way with the bride. Priscilla’s eyes widened as she took in the deadly steel glint in Smoke’s eyes. She raised a hand as though to intercede for her attacker. At the same moment, Miller made a desperate try for his Colt.

  Hot lead spat from the muzzle of Smoke’s .45. It pinwheeled the tough, rangey bandit, who absorbed the impact with a grunt and a blink. He hauled his iron clear of leather and fired in haste. His slug dug a hole in the flooring, two inches from Thomas Henning’s head.

  Quickly Miller adjusted his aim as Smoke Jensen shot him again. For some reason it grew unusually dark for mid-morning. Miller felt overwhelmingly tired; he wanted to find a place for a nice snooze. To those watching, he sagged, reeled three steps, and dropped to his knees. Smoke turned his attention back to Buck Waldron.

  In a crazed moment of desperation, Waldron tried his luck anyway. He cleared leather and swung his upper body at the hips to line up on Smoke Jensen, who had cast a quick glance over one shoulder at the vanquished Miller. The hammer came back noisily and Buck Waldron produced a nasty leer of triumph.