Battle of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Pearlie shrugged. “Longhorns is the most unpredictable critters on earth. Sometimes they run off fer no reason at all. Other times they won’t run if you ask ’em to, an’ a few times they stampede an’ then come back without bein’ asked. The first man who figures out how a longhorn’s brain works is gonna make hisself a fortune.”

  Smoke was keeping an eye on the horizon, and Pearlie was the first to notice.

  “You know they’ll be back, don’t you?” he asked, as the cows took off in a trot to rejoin the others.

  “It’s likely,” was all he said.

  “They’ll do it different next time,” Pearlie assured him a moment later. “They won’t come at us straight on.”

  “Hard to say, Pearlie. About all we can do is stay watchful until it happens.”

  “It’ll happen. You know it as well as me. The way I see it, after they’ve tried so many damn times, we’ll have to kill might’ near all of ’em afore it’s over an’ done with.”

  Smoke knew there was a great deal of wisdom behind Pearlie’s words.

  That evening, as Pearlie signaled a pot of beans was ready to eat, only seven heifers remained unaccounted for. Time was more important now than seven cows, Smoke decided, his eyelids heavy from lack of sleep.

  He found good news when he climbed down from his saddle at the campfire. The wounded Hereford bull had stopped bleeding entirely, and now it was grazing along with the others, apparently suffering no real discomfort from its injury.

  Smoke tied off his horse, carrying his bedroll.

  “You gonna sleep or eat?” Pearlie asked good-naturedly.

  “A little of both, I hope.”

  Cletus picked up his rifle. “I already ate all I could stand of Pearlie’s beans, so I’ll take the first watch along with Gal. Cal’s young enough not to need as much sleep as the rest of us.”

  Smoke tossed his bedroll over a stretch of soft grass before he came for a plate of beans. “Suits me, Cletus. I’ll relieve you before midnight. Ride as close to the herd as you can without spookin’ ’em. They’re still a little jittery after all that happened today.”

  “So am I,” Cal said softly, leaving his beans mostly untouched to saddle the gray colt.

  Pearlie straightened up from spooning more beans onto his plate. “Well I’ll be damned an’ hog-tied. We just witnessed a miracle, boys. That young ’un hardly touched his food tonight, an’ that’s like seein’ a man walk on water without gittin’ his feet wet.”

  Thirty-seven

  North of the Haystack Mountain range, Jessie led his men to a fork in the Pecos River corning from the west, a shallow body of sluggish water only belly-deep on their horses. Pickett seemed to be interested in a spot north of the crossing, where big rocks and tall cottonwoods lined the river.

  “This is it,” Pickett told Jessie, while Jose Vasquez and four of his remaining pistoleros made it across, followed by Billy Morton, Tom Hill, Pedro Lopez, and the two members of his gang left alive after the fight with Jensen. The last rider to cross was the Indian called Dreamer, who kept glancing backward as if he expected them to be followed.

  “This is what?” Jessie asked, still brooding over their resounding defeat yesterday morning at the hands of Jensen.

  “The perfect place,” Pickett replied, his voice turned to ice. “I’ll kill the son of a bitch while his horse is crossin’ this river. I can hide in them rocks yonder, an’ I’ll be close enough to use my scattergun. Betsy’ll cut him to pieces at this range. Probably kill his horse too.”

  Jessie looked things over. “He may get suspicious when he comes to a spot like this where he can’t see if anybody’s hid on the other side. Might not work like you planned.”

  “He has to cross here to make sure there ain’t no bogs or quicksand that’ll trap his cattle. He’s a rancher, an’ he’ll know the risks if he don’t test this crossing.”

  “We can have the rest of the men spread out up and down this riverbank to cover you.”

  Pickett wheeled on Jessie with fire in his eyes. “That’s what was wrong every goddamn time, Jessie. These idiots you hired don’t know the first thing ’bout killin’ a man out in the open. What you’ve got is a buncha saloon-raised gunmen who’ve got no experience bushwhackin’ a man who knows wild country. He’ll come real cautious down to this river, bein’ as careful as he knows how. That’s why I’m gonna do this my way, so none of the rest of these fools tip my hand on what I aim to do.”

  “Suit yourself, Bill,” Jessie said. “The only thing I care about is findin’ Smoke Jensen dead.”

  Pickett jutted his jaw. “You won’t find nothin’ but pieces of him. I give you my word on it. He’ll be twenty yards away when he’s in the middle of this river, an’ that’s close enough to shred every piece of meat on his body with a sawed-off shotgun like mine. You leave Jensen to me. The sumbitch is as good as dead right now if he crosses this river.”

  Jessie wondered. However, Pickett’s reputation for killing his victims any way he could made him the perfect choice for this job. Jessie could never have admitted it to anyone, but after yesterday’s defeat and the incredible number of men Jensen had killed single-handed, he’d begun to experience twinges of doubt that he could do the job himself. Jensen apparently had some uncanny ability to move around without detection. How else could he have slipped up behind Little Horse and four more experienced Apache warriors, chopping their heads open with some kind of ax, not the sort of weapon the average man used in a war being fought with guns.

  “I don’t give a damn how you do it, just make sure it don’t backfire,” Jessie said, as his grim-faced gunmen sat their horses around him, listening to his exchange with Pickett. Jessie knew the others feared Pickett, and rightfully so. Pickett was a madman, more than slightly out of kilter when it came to killing other men, even as they lay dying from other bullet wounds. Roy Cooper had been much the same in that regard. Only somehow, Jensen had been able to kill him along with all the others that night, and it still worried Jessie some.

  Pickett turned back to Jessie. “Tell that Injun to ride back and see how far they are behind us. An’ tell the dumb son of a bitch not to let ’em see him. All Injuns are good at bein’ sneaky, so tell him to be careful.”

  Dreamer apparently understood every word. At first he gave Pickett a chilly stare, then he swung his pony around and went back across the river, resting a very old Henry repeating rifle across his pony’s withers.

  “Dreamer’s liable to double-cross us now, after what you just said about him,” Jessie remarked, watching the Apache ride out of sight around a bend in the trail.

  Pickett made a face. “He won’t do it, because he’s after a payday. The rotten bastards will do damn near anything to get their hands on enough money to buy whiskey. Never saw an Injun who wasn’t drunk, or plannin’to get drunk. That’s why you can’t trust ’em.”

  Jessie looked north, where the trail climbed to the top of a ridge between two low mountains. “We’ll ride on over that rise yonder an’ make camp wherever there’s water. Find a spring or somethin’, a feeder creek. We’ll be listenin’ real close for gunshots.”

  “Won’t be but one,” Pickett said, “when little Miss Betsy gives Jensen her ten-gauge loads.” He drew his double-barrel Greener from a boot tied to the pommel of his saddle, and for a moment it seemed he almost caressed its dark walnut stock while his face visibly changed. He glanced over at Jessie and now a glint flickered in his pale eyes. “This here gun has ended a hell of a lot of men’s lives. Only this one’s gonna be special, because Jensen thinks he’s so goddamn tough an’ clever.”

  “He is clever,” Jessie said. “But like you say, he’ll die the same as any other man if a load of double-size buckshot hits him in the right places.”

  “He can’t be all that clever,” Pickett assured him. “A man makes mistakes now an’ then. The biggest mistake Jensen made was comin’ to Lincoln County at the wrong time. Now he’s gonna pay for it with his life.”

 
; Jessie reined his horse for the top of the ridge. There was no point in discussing it with Pickett any farther. If Pickett was as good as his reputation, and what Jessie had seen of him in action during several attacks on Chisum’s cow camps, all their troubles with Mr. Smoke Jensen would soon be over.

  Tom rode up beside Jessie as they were trotting up the ridge to look for water and a campsite.

  “This is liable to be one helluva mistake,” Tom said under his breath. “I’ve got a real bad feelin’ about it.”

  “You worry too much, Tom,” Jessie said, although he shared some of the same nagging doubts about Pickett’s planned ambush.

  Tom looked up at a clear spring sky. “I worry when a man’s already proved he’s hard to kill, an’ I’m sidin’ the bunch who aims to kill him. Pickett ain’t never seen Jensen close before. When he gits a good look, he may change his mind.”

  “That’s damn sure a fact,” Billy Morton said, riding along Jessie’s left side. “If I live to be a hundred years old, I won’t forgit what it was like when Jensen jumped up from behind that bush with both pistols spittin’ fire. It was the same as facin’ the devil himself.”

  “Bill Pickett’s a proven killer,” Jessie argued.

  It was Tom who said, “So’s this feller Smoke Jensen. I’ve never heard of him before he came here, but I’ll tell you one thing fer sure… he’s about as mean as they come, and this job ridin’ for Jimmy Dolan don’t pay enough to be worth gettin’ killed. If Pickett don’t kill him when he crosses that river, I’m quittin’ this outfit fer good. There’s gotta be easier ways to make money, an’ live long enough to spend it.”

  Billy didn’t say anything, but Jessie was sure he was of the same mind. “Give Pickett a chance to prove himself before you start quittin’ a good-payin’ job with Dolan,” said Jessie. “There ain’t all that much work to be had for a shootist in this part of the West, an’ I’m sure as hell not askin’ to be taken off the payroll till I know there ain’t no other choice.”

  Thirty-eight

  Cattle were strung out for half a mile when Smoke turned to look back at the herd. As they had from the beginning, the short Herefords brought up the rear. Cal and Cletus were riding drag at the back of the bunch. Bob and Johnny held the flank positions, keeping wandering strays driven back, while Pearlie and Duke rode point on either side, aiming lead cows in the right direction. A peaceful day had passed, with no sign of the Evans gang. Smoke had been reading their tracks every now and then, counting horses when the prints crossed barren ground. Between fifteen and twenty men were a day’s ride ahead of the herd, judging by the freshness of the tracks, the edges of the clear prints that were still sharp before wind and time had made the dirt crumble.

  According to a crudely drawn map he carried in his saddlebags, they were a couple of days’ drive from old Fort Sumner, an abandoned army post turned into a small community where sheep men and Mexican goatherds lived in empty army barracks. The herd was managing fifteen or twenty miles a day, slower because of the short-legged bulls.

  Smoke swung his horse away from the trees, where he’d been keeping an eye on the herd’s progress. He was staying closer to the cows than before, in part because the tracks left by Evans and his men continued due north, with no sign any of them had turned off to launch another attack or take up snipers’ positions when they came to high ground.

  Still, Smoke was nagged by the dull certainty that Evans would try again. Arrogant men with high opinions of themselves rarely ever gave up completely, not until someone convinced them they had no other choice.

  It appeared to be a small fork leading to the main body of the Pecos River a few miles to the east. Lined with cottonwoods and jumbles of limestone boulders swept aside by previous floods, it looked to be shallow, easy to cross. Smoke sat his Palouse on a high bluff above the river, watching things carefully from a considerable distance before he rode down to test the river bottom for treacherous sand pits and bogs.

  Examining the branches of each tree, he was troubled when he found no birds perched on any of the leafy limbs near the crossing. As with most of his experience, reading this sort of sign had been taught to him by Preacher. Most all types of wildlife exhibited behavior that was as good as a signpost, if a man knew how to read it. The sudden flight of birds from a particular spot was a warning to knowledgeable men. The direction a deer ran when it was frightened, sensing danger, was as meaningful as the angry charge of a grizzly protecting her newborn cubs. Even a lowly cricket gave off excellent warnings in the dark, simply by suddenly growing silent when it felt another presence close to its hiding place. The absence of sparrows or blue jays in trees beside the river alerted Smoke to the possibility of danger,

  He reined his Palouse around and tied it off in a thicket where it could graze, pulling his rifle, taking a single thin blanket from his bedroll, and wrapping it around his forearm. The sun was almost directly overhead. A soft breeze came from the west, thus he began his approach to the crossing from the east, upwind, in the fashion of all seasoned mountain men stalking prey. He had a possible use for the blanket, a trick, just in case someone was down there gunning for him.

  Pickett had grown bored with all the waiting. Last night, as he rested on thin blankets with a pint of tequila for company, his impatience had lessened somewhat. But today his nerves were on edge more than usual… It was this damn waiting, even though he fully understood the necessity of it. If Smoke Jensen was the trained killer everyone else believed he was, he’d be smart and cautious.

  He checked the loads in his pistol, a Colt Peacemaker, for what seemed the hundredth time, then he holstered it and after he took off his flat-brim Stetson, he peered above the rocks, where shadows from nearby cottonwoods covered his hiding place. Again there was no sign of a horseman approaching the river. He then clamped his jaw in frustration and ducked back down.

  “I’ll bet the gutless son of a bitch headed another direction,” he said softly, angrily. “He’s liable to ride plumb to Nebraska to get back home.” Pickett took another swallow of tequila, listening closely for the sound of a horse in the distance.

  He’d gone over what he meant to do a thousand times, not raising his head at all when the rider got close, waiting until he heard a horse in the river. Jensen would be looking for any kind of movement, and there would be none until he was in the water. Then he might catch a split-second glimpse of two shotgun barrels flashing in the sunlight just before they exploded, too late for any man to draw and shoot.

  “C’mon, you yellow bastard,” Pickett whispered, resting his head against a rock, his shotgun held loosely in his left fist with both hammers cocked… he didn’t want the click of metal to alert Jensen just before he killed him.

  He wondered what was keeping Jensen. According to what the Apache told Jessie, they should be nearing the river by now. He took a bite of jerky and washed it down with tequila. “Hard on a man’s nerves, all this waitin’.”

  He let his gaze wander upriver, then downstream, examining every rock and tree, when suddenly he saw a shadow dart among the cottonwood trunks.

  “It’s him,” Pickett hissed, whirling around to hide himself behind the boulder. Jensen wasn’t as clever as Jessie thought. Pickett was sure what he had seen was the outline of a man coming upstream, already on the north side of the river.

  He left his horse somewhere, Pickett thought, so he’d make less noise. Peering cautiously around the rock, he aimed his ten-gauge and drew his Peacemaker, ready for anything, every muscle in his body tensed.

  He saw the movement again and almost fired at it, until he caught himself. “Not till you’re closer, you bastard,” he whispered as his grip relaxed on his pistol. Pickett wanted to shred the Colorado cowboy with his scattergun if he could.

  Now nothing moved, and only the quiet gurgle of the river passing over stones reached his ears. The second time he saw Jensen he’d been closer, yet not quite close enough for Betsy to do her best work.

  “C’mon, turkey,” Pick
ett mouthed silently, as beads of sweat formed on his forehead. He could almost taste the moment when he would kill Jensen, a thickening of his tongue with a slightly sweet taste on the tip. He found himself longing for the sight of a bullet-torn body oozing blood from hundreds of pellet wounds, and he imagined the coppery smell of Jensen’s blood. He hoped the first twin charges didn’t kill Jensen instantly… It would be far better to stand over him, to see the fear and pain in his eyes just before another shotgun blast tore his head to pieces.

  More waiting made him more impatient, until a heavier gust of wind blew down the river, rippling its waters, and at the same time Jensen moved again, darting around the base of a cottonwood, rushing toward him.

  Pickett straightened up quickly and fired both barrels of the Greener, jolted by twin explosions that deafened him briefly. He saw the shadow swirl, twisting when a wall of lead struck.

  “Gotcha, you son of a bitch!” Pickett cried as he took a step away from the rock, holstering his pistol to reload the ten-gauge for a sure kill when he reached Jensen.

  “Not quite,” an even voice said behind him.

  Pickett froze, twisting his head to look over his shoulder. He saw a man standing beside a rock pile less than twenty yards away. Pickett’s mouth fell open.

  “You shot a blanket draped over a limb,” the man added, an evil grin widening his lips. “But the blanket does belong to me. I’m Smoke Jensen. I reckon you’ve been waitin’ here a long time to ambush me.”

  Pickett only had one shell in the Greener, and its breech was open. His Peacemaker was holstered. “How’d you get behind me?” Pickett asked, buying time until he could think of a way to get at his pistol without being shot. Both of Jensen’s pistols were holstered… He carried a Winchester, muzzle aimed down at the ground.

  “To tell the truth, it was mighty easy. I suppose you’re the feller named Bill Pickett, on account of that short shotgun. We were told you fancied yourself a man-killer. So far, the only thing you’ve shot holes in was a blanket”