“I could order you not to.” Then Lathrop saw their side of it. The prairie could be mighty lonesome for someone not used to it, the mountains more so. Perhaps it would be good to get some of the men blooded to how things are done out here. “But this time I won’t. Take the men you’ve picked, and go rob your stage. There will be one coming back around ten o’clock in the morning. Mr. Finnegan and I will continue on with the others. You can catch up at night camp.”
Force of habit directed the tug at his forelock that O’Boyle gave to Lathrop. “Thank ye, sir. An’ we’ll be sharin’ fair as fair.”
Rattling along on the high driver’s seat of the Concorde coach, behind a matched team of powerful-rumped bays, Walt Tilton could sense through the reins that the off-wheeler had started to slacken, let the others pull the load. The gelding ran just fast enough to keep up, but not put strain on the harness.
“C’mon, you lazy sod. Jaspar, put your shoulders into it,” he shouted over the grind of the steel-tired wheels. A quick touch of churning hindquarter with the whip brought the animal into tandem effort with its partner.
“How’d you always know?” Slim Granger, the express guard, asked.
“I’ve been driving these rigs for nigh onto twenty years now,” Walt informed him. “After a while you get a feel for what the teams are doin’. It’s sort of like you knowin’ when to put hands on that scatter-gun of yourn.”
Slim shook his head. “That’s plain instinct. It’s like I can sense trouble before it happens.” Slim’s hands found the barrel of the L. C. Smith 10-gauge as he spoke and raised the weapon to the ready, thumb on the righthand hammer. “Like right now.”
“You funnin’ me?” Walt asked.
“Nope.” Slim had gone white around his full lips. His mustache wriggled like a live thing. He nodded ahead along the highroad.
Four men in long white linen dusters appeared suddenly from behind tall brush. Each held a weapon in an awkward fashion, as though ill trained in its use. The one to left center rose in his stirrups and pointed the muzzle of his sixgun skyward.
“Stand and deliver!” he shouted, after the shot barked from his Colt.
Walt Tilton didn’t even slow the stage. As the other highwaymen brought their guns into ready positions from beside Walt, Slim let go one barrel of the ten-gauge. The double-aught buckshot column quickly flashed across space to turn the face of Paedrik Boyne into a wet, red smear. His arms flew into the air and he flopped off his horse into the dust stirred by the nervous animal’s hooves.
Three .33-caliber pellets from the second barrel punched painfully into the left shoulder of Connor O’Fallon. Howling a pain-filled curse, O’Fallon awkwardly turned his mount away and put spurs to the flanks. At once the horse dug in and set off at a pounding sprint. O’Fallon bounded and swayed in the saddle like a bag of flour. Smoke still poured from the muzzles of the double-barrel when Slim opened the latch and fished out two long brass cartridges.
Fresh ones quickly took their place and Slim bit at his lip as the speed at which the attack had come on them forced him to snap shut the action. The big ten-gauge roared again and another of the highwaymen spurred away, shrieking in pain and outrage. Only one unharmed man stood in the way of the careening coach.
“God damn it, you said this would be easy,” Seamas Quern screamed over his shoulder as he made hasty retreat.
Sean O’Boyle glowered after him and then turned back to fire on the driver, heedless of the danger that created. The .38 S & W bullet from his long-barreled Ivor Johnson tilt-top revolver splintered wood from the seat between the legs of Walt Tilton. Both hands tending the reins, Tilton could not return fire. He relied on Slim for that.
With the range closed to only a few feet, Slim believed he could not miss. To his utter surprise, he did. Beside him, Walt began to haul on the reins and slow the coach. “That’s the last one. Let’s get him and take him on to Dodge.”
Alone now, Sean O’Boyle decided against a final attempt to rob the stage. As the vehicle slowed, he made a fast move in the opposite direction. Once well out of range; he slowed and looked back while the guard and driver picked up the dead Paedrik Boyne and an unhorsed Seamas Quern.
“Somehow, bucko, I’ve a feelin’ Mr. Lathrop is not going to be pleased with this, he’s not,” O’Boyle said aloud, as he raced in the wake of Connor O’Fallon.
When the Denver-bound train carrying Smoke and Sally Jensen arrived in Ellsworth, the town was abuzz with the latest novelty in outlawry. The Dodge City newspaper carried a detailed account. Smoke read it carefully, but did not display the amusement it generated in others.
“I’ll give you one guess as to who these ‘funny-talking dudes’ are who tried to rob the stage and got caught,” Smoke remarked to Oliver.
Oliver Johnson nodded agreement. “Some of Lathrop’s New York or Boston thugs. What do you suppose went wrong?”
“I don’t know, but it’s worth finding out.”
“We’re going to Dodge City, Smoke?” Sally asked.
“You're going on to Denver, where I want you to take a room at the Brown Palace. Oliver will go with you. I’m thinking of a short detour through Dodge City.”
Eastern cynicism colored Oliver’s words. “Do you think you’ll learn anything worth the time to go there?”
“Considering that they hang a man for just about any offense out here, yes, I expect some cooperation.”
Subdued, Oliver nodded thoughtfully. “Our eastern gangs have a strong bond of loyalty.”
Smoke cocked an eyebrow, cut his eyes to Oliver’s deadpan expression. “You sound almost proud. The way I see it, the sight of some new three-quarter-inch hemp rope, with thirteen wraps to the knot, will loosen the most loyal tongue.”
Sally came to him in the wing chair of the parlor section of the private car. She put a hand on Smoke’s arm. “Smoke does real well in getting information from people who don’t want to talk.”
“Then you’re going to Dodge City.” Oliver made it a statement.
“Right,” Smoke closed the topic.
Ford County Sheriff Pat McRaney greeted Smoke Jensen with a firm handshake. “A bit far from your bailiwick, Marshal.”
“I am. But we have reason to believe these men were headed for Denver.”
“Are they wanted for anything else?”
“I’m not sure, Pat. How many were there on the holdup?” “Four. One’s dead, two are wounded, one of them in jail, two got away.”
“Only four? There should have been a lot more than that.”
“Oh, they came through here, a whole lot of them. Got off a train from back East and took horses out of town, headed west. All of them talked peculiar. The first batch seemed to talk through their noses.”
“First batch?”
“Oh, yes. They had an overnight for the City of Denver. Kept to themselves, didn’t get into any trouble. A rough-lookin’ lot, though.”
Smoke thought about that. “What about the gang your prisoner came in with?”
Pat McRaney scratched his balding head. “Most sounded Irish. There were some who talked real flat. You know what I mean? Sort of, ‘fawht in a cawdbwaad cawton.’ Ever hear of anything like that?”
“Boston. That’s the way people from Boston sometimes talk,” Smoke informed the lawman.
“Hmmm. I see. Or then again, I don’t see. What are a lot of single rough-lookin’ fellers headed to Denver for?” “Maybe to work in the mines, but I doubt it,” Smoke offered.
“D’you want to talk to the prisoner?”
“That’s what I came here for,” Smoke said, rising. “I shouldn’t be long.”
“Take your time,” McRaney offered generously.
Once in the cell, Smoke Jensen looked over a crestfallen, pain-wracked Seamas Quern. “I know you,” the mountain man charged. “You were in the warehouse with my wife.” “Don’t know what yer talkin’ about, lad,” Quern evaded. “I’m Smoke Jensen. Does that refresh your memory?” Quern blanched. His jaw sag
ged and his lower lip began to tremble. Agitated beyond the agony in his wounds, he jumped up and grabbed desperately at the bars. “Jailer! Hey, Jailer, help me. I’m being murdered!”
Smoke grabbed Quern by the shoulder, spun him around. “The turnkey’s developed a hearing problem. There’s just you and me in here. Quern.”
“How’d you know my name?”
“I got it from the sheriff. You are Seamas Quern, aren’t you? You’re in Sean O’Boyle’s gang of dockyard thugs? What are you doing headed toward Denver?”
Quern turned surly again. “You know so goddamned much, you answer your questions.”
Smoke hit him in the gut, where it would not show, hard enough, though, to double over the cocky longshoreman. “Did you know they still consider stagecoach robbery a hanging offense out here?”
Gagging, gasping for air, Seamas Quern looked up at the hard face of Smoke Jensen. His eyes watered and he worked full lips to form low, breathy words. “Th-that’s not true, is it?”
There hadn’t been anyone hanged for a stage robbery that didn’t include a killing since the territories had become states, yet Smoke recognized that running a bluff would work with this dock rat from Boston. He nodded wordlessly.
“Oh, Jesus. I—I never counted on a rope around me neck, I didn’t. Is there . . . isn’t there any way . . . anything I can do to get the judge to go easy on me?”
“You can try cooperating. Tell me what I want to know and I’ll put in a good word for you. What you and your guttersnipe friends didn’t know is that I am a deputy U. S. Marshal. My word can carry a lot of weight with the courts.”
From that point on, it went a lot easier than even Smoke Jensen had anticipated. Within half an hour, he had learned everything Seamas Quern knew or had guessed about Phineas Lathrop’s operation and his eventual goal. Sally had not been misled by the danger to herself, and Ollie had been right in labeling it a criminal empire.
With nearly fifty men to swell his ranks, Lathrop had every possibility of achieving his purpose. Smoke Jensen chafed at the delay of the train to Denver. He saw Lathrop as the greatest threat ever to the High Lonesome. And only he could do something about it.
Phineas Lathrop cut a sour gaze around his dingy surroundings. He had been forced into hiding out at this third-rate fleabag hotel in Denver by the unbelievable stupidity of Sean O’Boyle. How could anyone be so stupid, so inept? The foiled stage robbery had left them with one man alive and in custody. How much Seamas Quern knew of his actual plans, Lathrop had no way of knowing. The anger that had smoldered ever since flashed to new flame as he considered it.
When O’Boyle and his wounded henchman O’Fallon caught up to the column, Lathrop had personally administered a savage beating as object lesson to O’Boyle and anyone else who might have delusions that criminal activity on the frontier was no different than back East. Fools! They had been damned fools, and gotten one man killed and two others wounded, one of them locked away in jail.
Victor Middleton interrupted his dismal thoughts. “Let’s get out of this disgusting pigsty and get some fresh air, something to eat, a good, stiff drink.”
“All right,” Phineas Lathrop agreed. “We have to be careful, though. We don’t know what that lout Quern has told the law.”
“To hell with him. He may have bled to death by the time he got to Dodge City. Here in Denver, we’re simply honest businessmen, going about our affairs like anyone else.”
“That’s why we’re living in this rat’s nest,” Lathrop grumbled. Yet his spirits rose somewhat on a promising thought.
His ignominious station in life would be a short one, Phineas consoled himself. Already his imported gunmen from the East had dispersed to carry out the land grab necessary to spell triumph for him and his associates. Even if Smoke Jensen came directly back to Colorado, he would arrive too late to prevent their enterprise from a successful conclusion. By the time Jensen could organize any sort of resistance, all of the northwest corner of Colorado would belong to their consortium. He could not lose!
Smoke Jensen caught up with his wife and the Boston Globe reporter at the Brown Palace in Denver late the next day. They had a late, sumptuous dinner, stayed the night, and caught the early-morning milk train to Big Rock. Monte Carson had been alerted by telegraph and met the trio of weary travelers on the depot platform. Immediately Smoke noted a changed, charged atmosphere about the people waiting for the return run to Denver.
Particularly among those who knew him. The women shielded their faces with fans or gloved hands; some of the men deliberately turned their backs on him. When the luggage had been unloaded from the baggage car, Monte led the way to his office. There he glowered his suspicion at Oliver Johnson. He addressed his remarks to Smoke Jensen.
“ ’Pears you got some influential people riled at you, Smoke. Some of those eastern reporters have been filing stories with the papers in Denver, Pueblo, Dodge City, Saint Louie, near everywhere west of the Mississippi, I’d reckon. They ain’t sayin’ nice things ’bout you, either.” “We got enough of that back there, Monte.”
Monte’s eyes narrowed even more, a dark glitter sparking out from lowered lids. “That’s why I can’t work out why ’n hell you brung one along with you, Smoke.”
“Ollie’s okay, Monte. He filed five favorable stories. Three of them even got published.”
“Ain’t hardly a fart in a cyclone, Smoke. For every good word he wrote about you, there’s a hundred bad ones . . . and they all got in print.”
“Is that why I noticed a coolness from my good neighbors at the depot?” Smoke asked, his concern growing.
“You could say that. Seems they forgot real quick that out here we judge a man by how tall he walks and how much sand he’s got, not by what some East Coast asshole writes about him . . . er, sorry, ma’am,” Monte added, for Sally’s benefit.
“Oh, that’s quite all right, Monte. I agree with you entirely,” Sally replied, without even a hint of a blush.
Smoke broke in to change the subject to that of his greatest concern: “Has there been a lot of strangers showing up around town lately? Pale faces, with arms and shoulders too big for the rest of them, say?”
Monte Carson’s brow wrinkled. “There’s . . . been a few. Can’t rightly place what’s oddest about them. You’re right about some of them’s shape. Heck, they’ve got wrists the size of some men’s biceps.”
“Longshoremen,” Smoke explained, convinced now of the imminent danger to the people of his beloved High Lonesome. “Dock workers from Boston and New York City. When they’re working at their regular jobs, they wrestle around bales of cargo all day that it would take you and me both to move. Let me guess—the ones from New York arrived first, right?”
“Yes. Only, they didn’t hang around town long. Looked sorry as hell to be on a horse’s back, but they grained and rested their mounts overnight and took off to the northwest. You ask me, they’d have been happier walkin’.”
“Don’t underestimate them, Sheriff. They’re dangerous,” Oliver Johnson contributed.
“How’s that? Oh, they had plenty of shootin’ irons along, but the experiences of a lifetime tell me they didn’t have too much idea of how best to use them.”
“Ollie’s right, Monte,” Smoke took up the narrative. He explained what had happened in Boston and New York, of the bungled stage robbery outside Dodge City, and some of what he had learned of the Eastern criminal network from Oliver Johnson. Monte shook his head more than once during the recitation.
“So what yer sayin’ is that these boys could be a real threat to folks hereabouts? Well, there’s been some unsavory deals struck, I can tell you that. Folks won’t talk about it much. Seem real scared. But they sold their places anyhow and left the area.”
“I’m liking this even less,” Smoke growled.
Monte rose, crossed to the potbellied stove in the corner by his desk, and poured four cups of coffee. “Now that you’re back, Smoke, I suppose there’s nothing for it but you an
’ me go out and find these eastern hard cases of yours.” “That’s my idea exactly. But first, I’d fight a whole litter of wildcats for some of your coffee,” Smoke spoke with rekindled enthusiasm.
Looking wounded, Oliver Johnson entered his protest. “You’re not leaving me out.”
Smoke’s cool, level gaze cut to the young reporter. “No. I wouldn’t dream of it. As soon as we get Sally back to the Sugarloaf, the three of us are going out and kick hell out of Lathrop’s hooligans.”
Nineteen
Thin tendrils of smoke rose from the tree-shrouded clearing ahead. Off to the right, a pair of redheaded woodpeckers made Gatling gun rat-a-tats on the grizzled bark of a tall, old pine. Lowering the brass-bound field glasses from his eyes, Smoke Jensen nodded and pointed ahead to their quarry’s night camp, already laid out at not quite four-thirty in the afternoon. Typical eastern dudes, tenderfeet, he thought scornfully.
He, Monte Carson, and Oliver Johnson had left the deep valley that sheltered the Sugarloaf two days earlier, by way of Vail Pass. Monte had taken the customary frontier way of legitimizing the reporter’s presence by deputizing him. They angled along the Arapaho Pike trail north and westward. The three lawmen had found immediate evidence of the presence of Lathrop’s henchmen.
A burned-out barn and vacant house told them a clear story. Similar, apparently abandoned properties added to their store of knowledge. They had encountered their first living resisters at twilight the previous night. Monte Carson went forward to talk with the crusty, hard-bitten rancher in his dooryard, faintly illuminated by the spill from a single, low-burning coal-oil lamp inside the cabin. Smoke’s name came up in the course of their conversation.
“Smoke Jensen’s gone plumb crazy back East,” the gnarled, bent old man stated as fact. “Even if he was out here, he’d as like line up with them that’s giving’ me grief, least, that’s what the papers say.”
Rage of the Mountain Man Page 18