Smoke had to duck to enter, as did his horse. Once they were beyond the low opening, the cave widened, the ceiling arched high above. Smoke ground-reined Dandy and used flint and steel, and a bit of treated thistledown, to light a candle he also took from his right-side saddlebag. With the limited glow of the wax taper, he searched his surroundings.
He soon discovered that he was not the first human occupant of the cavern. Powdery dry billets of wood lay in a natural crib. With a stick of that, and some kerosene from a tin flask in his gear, Smoke fashioned a torch. Its greater light revealed an astonishing scene. The walls, and part of the ceiling, were covered with petroglyphs, stick figures of animals and men, carved into the wall and crudely painted with natural dyes.
Darkness had protected them and they looked down on this modern intruder in all their original, vivid color. Smoke Jensen found himself gape-mouthed. Preacher had shown him examples carved in visible rock faces: men and the sun and animals that could have been elk, or even bison. The old mountain man had also spoken of such rare and beautiful examples of the art of ancient people who had lived in these caves long before the coming of the Spanish and other Europeans. Some said, Preacher went on, that they had been here before the coming of the Indians.
Smoke mulled over this scrap of information while he continued to examine the cave. He found some non-representational designs also. Perhaps some sort of religious symbols, he speculated. Outside his shelter, the rain hissed and seethed down in a torrent. Smoke gathered wood for a fire. It would be utterly smokeless, he estimated, burn faster than hell, and keep him busy replenishing the fuel.
Once he had his blaze going, Smoke stripped to the buff and laid out his clothing to dry. Wisps of steam rose from coat, shirt, vest, and trousers as the rocks they lay upon heated up. Smoke made his way to the mouth of the cave. A careful study revealed why the entrance was to low.
Over the years, soil had collected in the roots of small trees. The network of entertwined tree roots had attracted more soil. At present, a huge pine dominated the overhead shelf. From slightly inside, Smoke could see the stone arch of the cave’s natural mouth, partly buried in dirt, pebbles, and roots. Once more it gave him pause to marvel at the intricacies of nature.
Breaking off his reflections, Smoke turned to his horse. “Well, Dandy, I reckon we could use a bit of something to eat.”
Smoke filled a tin cup with water, added about a tablespoon of Arbuckle’s Arabica, and set it on the fire, on a small trivet he unfolded from his camp gear. While it came to a boil, he put a double scoop of oats and cracked corn into a nosebag and fed Dandy. Then he returned to his coffee. The rich aroma made his stomach cramp. He broke out a smoked shank of deer meat and a couple of cold biscuits. That would have to do. For both of them.
While he ate, the fury of nature raged overhead. Rather than slacking off, the storm sent a second front sweeping down from Wyoming and dumped more rain into the canyon. When he completed his spartan meal, he retrieved a collapsible bucket he had set outside and gave Dandy a long drink. Nothing for it now but to make himself comfortable.
Darkness had replaced day with the coming of the storm and Smoke Jensen estimated it would remain until long after sundown. He unstrapped his bedroll and spread the blankets on the hard floor of the cavern. With his saddle as a pillow, Smoke leaned back, rolled a quirley, and puffed it to life. When the cigarette had burned down to his fingers, he extinguished it, put out the torch, and settled in for a long-needed solid sleep.
When the thunderstorm passed by, more water-laden clouds backed up against its rear and unloosed a steady downpour. The dim drum of rain drops lulled Smoke Jensen into so deep a slumber that he came only partway out of it at the sound of a loud crashing at the mouth of the cave. Only after he awakened with the first pale light of dawn did Smoke find his path out of the cavern impeded by the large pine that had fallen during the night.
* * *
With both himself and his horse on the inside, he was going to have one dandy fine hell of a time getting out, Smoke Jensen pondered, as he stared at the obstruction. He pulled gloves from his hip pocket and slid long, thick fingers into the supple leather. Then he started to climb the rough bark of the downed pine.
A thick, resinous odor assailed his nostrils. It smelled fresh and clean. Quite a contrast to the mud-slicked surface he wriggled upon. The five-foot-thick trunk left space enough for light and air to enter the cave. It let Smoke get his head and arms through the opening. His shoulders hung up.
The harder he struggled, the more tightly he became wedged in the restrictive mouth of the cave. Anger fired determination for Smoke Jensen. He reversed his left arm and tried to reach past his shoulder to the big coffin-handled Bowie knife at his side. No luck. With renewed patience, he began to pick and dig at the damp soil that denied him movement.
That, too, proved of no avail. The combined elements of his situation only fueled his burning humiliation when he heard an amused voice rise from below his line of sight, somewhere near the top of the up-ended tree.
“Well, dang me, am I witness to the raisin’ of the dead?”
“Don’t be such a jackass. Do something to help me,” Smoke snapped. Then he paused, frowned. He knew that voice. “L’Lupe? Is that you?”
A cackle of laughter answered. “Sure’s yer cornin’ back from the grave. Saay, don’t I know that voice? Be you the growed-up version of the li’l boy brat what pestered me an’ Preacher nigh unto death years ago?”
“I might be,” Smoke bit off, his irritation growing. “Smoke . . . Jensen. De quoi s’agit-il?” his accent thickening with each word, L’Lupe climbed toward Smoke Jensen and the laughter began again. "Puis-je vous etre utile?” The French Smoke had picked up from this, and other old mountain men, came back slowly. “Hell, yes, you can be of assistance to me. Get me out of here.”
L’Lupe—the Wolf—whose real name was Renard Dou-chant—continued to cackle while he studied Smoke’s predicament from up close. An old friend of Preacher, L’Lupe had been ancient when young Smoke Jensen had first met him. He looked not a day older now. His hair, worn in a long, thick braid at the back of his head, seemed no grayer than during that initial encounter. Nor had his seamed, leathery face and bright blue eyes changed. The latter still twinkled with amusement at a world gone mad from under a jutting ridge furry with salt-and-pepper brows. L’Lupe had to be well into his seventies, or even eighties, yet he looked fifty.
And he carried himself like a man that age, Smoke observed, as Douchant stretched and bent to study the restricting material that held Smoke fast. He hummed and hawed, squinted and rubbed his hairless, rock-square jaw. “You are fortunate, mon ami. I have a pick along. We can open the hole and pop you out like a grape from its skin, ce n ’est rien. ”
“It may be nothing for you,” Smoke grumbled, catching the buoyant mood of his old friend. “But I’m the one who’s stuck here.”
“Only for a moment, so take care to not excite yourself. Did not Preacher teach you patience?”
“Of course he did, but I have a horse in here which won’t have any air to breathe before long.”
“Aha! And I have two mules. The one I ride, and the one for the packs, non? With them we will pull this tree away in no time.”
With that, L’Lupe popped out of Smoke’s view. He was back in three minutes, during which Smoke continued to sweat and struggle to reach his knife. L’Lupe’s bounding joviality grated on raw nerves while the energetic oldster toiled with pick and shovel to open the way for Smoke. At last he paused.
“This will take an ax.”
“Oh, no,” Smoke protested. “There’ll be more meat than root in the path of that blade.”
“Take—how you say?—your ease, mon ami. I mean to cut away from below, to let the bole drop lower. Then you can crawl out.”
Twenty trying minutes later, Smoke Jensen sensed a loosening of pressure against his shoulders. Another solid plock! of the ax in L’Lupe’s hands and the uprooted pine s
ank with a thud. Quickly, Smoke crawled his way to freedom. At once he took charge.
“Bring up your mules. I’m worried about my horse.” The jerry-rigged harness fitted the mules with an unlikely collection of odds and ends. Trailing from the leather portions, ropes led to the trunk of the pine, each secured around its girth. When Smoke Jensen and Renard Douchant had both inspected them and concluded their satisfaction, the old mountain man split the air with a shrill whistle between gapped teeth.
"Allons, mes amis, pull! Put your backs into it. Pull!”
Protesting vocally, the two powerful animals took up the slack, and leaned into their harness. Leather creaked and hemp rope hummed. The once tall, stately pine began to squeal in objection to the stress exerted on it.
Rocks and muddy rubble began to spill downhill. One of the mules, Biscuit, gave an impatient bray and set his haunches. An almost human groan came from the big animal and then a cascade of earth spilled out from below the fallen tree. The huge weight tottered on its exposed roots for a moment, then crashed downward, away from the cave.
L’Lupe clapped hands together and declared, “Well, that is done,” before he bounded off after his pair of mules. When he returned, he found Smoke soothing Dandy at the bottom of the path to the cavern. L’Lupe wasted no time in satisfying his curiosity.
“Now, tell me, mon ami—what is it you are doing out here all alone?”
Smoke Jensen carefully laid out the threat to the High Lonesome posed by Phineas Lathrop and his gang. L’Lupe interrupted frequently with expressions of shock or outrage.
His countenance darkened as each act of depredation unfolded. At last, clearly agitated, L’Lupe rose, dusted off his hands, and spoke in a quavering voice.
“This is monstrous, my friend Smoke. You say there are how many . . . thirty or forty? So, then, what you must do is keep on their track. And I? I shall go off and round up a little help.”
Togwotee Pass, at over 9,000 feet, was one of the highest so far opened through the Rockies by man. From the summit, Phineas Lathrop studied the horizon in both directions. He nodded in apparent approval of his thoughts and summoned Sean O’Boyle with a crook of one finger.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Lathrop. An’ what would it be ye’d be wantin’ o’ me and me boys?”
“I want you to select twelve of your best.” Well aware of their abilities in this wild country, Lathrop could not keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “You are to stay here, erect a roadblock, and hold off Smoke Jensen.”
“It’s sure he’s comin’, then, is it?”
“You can count on it, Mr. O’Boyle. Not to worry, though. Given the narrowness of this pass, and a well-made barricade, I have every confidence that a baker’s dozen of you can withstand any attack by one gunfighter, a broken-down old sheriff, and a green kid reporter.”
“An’ when would ye be expectin’ this attack to happen?” Shrewdness glowed in O’Boyle’s black eyes.
“Within a day, two at the most. So you had better get busy. And—ah—good luck.”
O’Boyle’s black glower told what he thought of that wish. He turned, nevertheless, and began to pick the men he wanted with him. He regretted he could not choose Eamon Finnegan. Eamon was the only one who could keep the rest in line. He settled for Connor O’Fallon, James Finnegan, Liam O’Tolle, Bryan Gallagher, and Henny Duggan among the first six he named off. He called them together and began to explain their assignment as the rest of the severely reduced column rode off to the west, toward Jackson’s Hole.
Shortly after sundown, L’Lupe and three men of equal age glided silently up to the camp made by Smoke Jensen. From thirty feet out, the wily old mountain man called out to make their presence known.
“Hello, the camp.”
“Hello, yourself,” Smoke responded. “Come on in, Reynard.”
“How’d you know it was me?” L’Lupe asked, when he hunkered down beside Smoke Jensen and poured a cup of coffee.
“I heard you stumbling around out there.”
“Sacre bleu! You lie; L’Lupe does not stumble around in the woods.” They laughed together and then Douchant turned to the trio squatting across the fire. “Some friends from old times. They had nothing to do with their days, so I brought them along.”
Smoke knew them and greeted all warmly. “Greener Jack, High Pockets, Lonesome Brown. Good of you to come.”
“Hell, didn’t take much thinking on,” Lonesome Brown allowed. “ ’Pears to me to be the only fight around.”
“Who is this Lathrop that L’Lupe was tellin’ us about?” Greener Jack asked.
“He’s from the East,” Smoke began his explanation, to be interrupted by High Pockets, “It figgers.” Smoke went on to detail what he knew of Lathrop’s grandiose scheme, omitting the personal side to their conflict. When he concluded, the three reinforcements offered their allegiance in their own ways.
“Time’s a-wastin’, ’f you ask me,” Greener Jack advised.
“They’ll be gettin’ close to Jackson’s Hole. Lor’ we had some high good times there a couple of years,” Lonesome Brown recalled.
“Any idea where these bad hombres is headed?” High Pockets asked.
Smoke’s high, smooth brow furrowed. “Now, that’s been naggin’ at me for some time. If I thought they knew anything about this country, I’d swear that Lathrop is trying to reach Yellowstone.”
“The river, or that wild country with the water spouts they made into a Na-tion-al Park?” Lonesome Brown asked.
“Either . . . both. Thing is, I don’t know if Lathrop knows about that country at all. Well, sunup comes early,” Smoke concluded, as he poured the dregs of his coffee on the cook-fire and rose to head for his bedroll. “I want us to be on the trail an hour before sunup.”
Smoke’s keen eyes were first to spot a dark, irregular smudge across the trail. He pointed it out to L’Lupe.
Douchant studied it a moment and spat on the ground. “I do not believe the Blackfeet, they came back to life just for us.”
“Nor do I. Reckon the best idea is to ride on down like we don’t suspect anything.”
For once, Smoke Jensen didn’t have all that good an idea. He and L’Lupe found that out some three minutes later when a rifle bullet cracked past between them and a spurt of powder smoke rose from the log barricade.
“We’ll be comin’ up on Togwotee Pass in an hour,” L’Lupe Douchant informed Smoke Jensen shortly after nine o’clock the next morning. “ ’Member that time them Blackfoot braves ambushed a company of fur trappers?”
That caused Smoke to reevaluate his estimate of L’Lupe’s age. He had to be more than eighty. Which made him not an unusual man, but a remarkable one.
“Preacher told me about it. I wasn’t even born then.”
Each knew the incident L’Lupe had brought up and needed no discussion. With a wordless command, Smoke sent Greener Jack off with his two companions to approach the pass from a slightly different angle. No sense in taking unnecessary risks.
When their mounts leaned into the grade, Smoke grew even more cautious. He cut his eyes from side to side, took in every rock and bush, and the distant black smudge that marked stately firs. Supple aspen whispered to them as the steady breeze agitated their heart-shaped leaves.
L’Lupe’s mule was blowing hard when they topped the crest and ambled down toward the summit of the pass. It lay in the bottom of a bowl-like basin, surrounded by steep, sharp peaks, much like the caldera of an ancient volcano.
Twenty-six
“B’God, there he comes, bold as brass,” Sean O’Boyle declared, as he studied the approaching riders. “Those of you who ain’t seen him before, that’s Smoke Jensen.”
“Who’s the old fart with him?” James Finnegan asked.
“Don’t matter, it don’t.” A second later, O’Boyle let fly the first round in their encounter.
“Aw, you can’t hit shit,” Brian Gallagher derided Sean O’Boyle, when the bullet missed.
“Shut your mouth an’ t
ake yer best shot, wiseass.” Sean continued to pout while he cycled the action of the unfamiliar Winchester.
“Don’t look like we’re searin’ ’em off any, it don’t,” Connor O’Fallon observed.
Half a dozen rifles barked in time. None of the eastern greenhorns hit what they’d aimed at. By then, Smoke Jensen had closed the range to under a hundred yards. Bent low over the neck of his stallion, Dandy, Smoke sighted along the barrel of his .45 Peacemaker and let fly a round. A risky shot at best, he knew, especially from the back of a cantering horse.
An instant later he turned his head to flash a smile of triumph to L’Lupe when a cry of pain rewarded his efforts.
* * *
Sean O’Boyle stared open-mouthed at the wounded man beside him. “Mary an’ all the saints, that man can shoot, he can.”
“Better than any of us,” Connor O’Fallon informed his boss.
“Aim more careful, damn it!”
Young James Finnegan stared at Sean O’Boyle. “They’re gettin’ too close for rifles, anyway.”
“Then stand up. Use yer sixguns.”
Reluctant to leave the security of the logs, they did so slowly. When the volume of fire increased to ten revolvers, it did cause Smoke and L’Lupe to swerve to one side. It also did another thing. It provided excellent targets for Greener Jack, High Pockets, and Lonesome Brown.
From a notch between two of the surrounding peaks, they each downed one of the eastern thugs. That sent those at the barricade in desperate dives to avoid a similar fate. It also allowed Smoke and L’Lupe to draw clear of the withering fire.
“Certainement they are not the Blackfeet,” said L’Lupe dryly. “They were not stupid enough to tie themselves down behind le retranchement sans valeur. ”
“That’s more of a barricade than an entrenchment, worthless or otherwise, but I follow what you mean.” Smoke changed the subject, “I wonder how long it will take them to realize we didn’t fire those shots.”
Rage of the Mountain Man Page 25