“Early this mornin’, just before the sun come up. Our milk cow got loose and strayed off up the draw into the valley. She’s done that before. Sara Beth went lookin’ for her, and she saw a herd of cows bein’ driven north. Three fellas who were with the herd spotted her and come after her on horseback, a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’. Vile, nasty things they yelled at her, too, and I ain’t doubtin’ for a second that if they’d caught her, they would’ve done everything they threatened to.”
“You’re probably right. I’m sorry that happened. My friends and I didn’t have anything to do with it, though.”
The rancher nodded slowly and said, “I reckon I believe you. Are you really Smoke Jensen?”
“I am,” Smoke said with a faint smile.
“Well, come on in, then, and the rest of your bunch is welcome, too. We ain’t got much, but I can have Sara Beth put on a pot of coffee and you’re welcome to water your horses.”
Smoke’s friendly smile widened.
“We’re much obliged to you for the hospitality, Mister . . . ?”
“Hannon. Ezra Hannon.” The man tucked the rifle under his arm, clearly no longer interested in fighting. “Sorry for takin’ those potshots at you.”
“You were spooked,” Smoke said. “Given the circumstances, I don’t blame you. Likely I would have been, too.”
Ezra Hannon shook his head and said, “With everything I’ve heard about you, I reckon it’d take the Devil his own self to spook you, Mr. Jensen.” He paused. “And that’s just what you’re liable to find if you’re headed to Bitter Springs.”
A few minutes of conversation filled Smoke in on what had happened. Ezra Hannon, who had been operating this ranch for the past year with the help of his daughter, Sara Beth, and a single hired hand, a Mexican who lived in a jacal farther up the draw, had struck an uneasy truce with the rustlers. Hannon had encoun-tereded them driving Sugarloaf cattle up the valley the last time they had struck Smoke’s herd, and the men had warned Hannon that they would kill him and his daughter if he told anyone about what he had seen.
“But you’re telling me,” Smoke pointed out.
Hannon gave a disgusted snort.
“They said they’d leave me and Sara Beth and Pablo alone if we did like they told us,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, they broke the deal first. Anyway, now that you’re on their trail, I don’t figure I’ll have to worry. You’ll wipe that sorry bunch right off the face of the earth.”
“I plan on getting my cattle back, that’s for sure,” Smoke said. He smiled at the young woman who handed him a cup of coffee. “Thank you, Sara Beth.”
She wasn’t much more than a girl, still pretty even though the hard frontier life was starting to put hollows under her eyes and lines on her face that shouldn’t have been there on someone not yet out of her teens. She still looked shaken from her experience early that morning.
“How did you get away from the men who chased you?” Smoke asked her.
She cast her eyes toward the cabin’s hard-packed dirt floor.
“I know a hidin’ place,” she said in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “A little hole in the side of a gully. I pulled some brush over it and they couldn’t even tell it was there.”
“That was quick thinking,” Smoke told her.
She glanced up at him, her eyes lighting with pleasure as she did so. In the hardscrabble existence she and her father lived here, she probably didn’t get a lot of praise.
Smoke didn’t want to encourage her to develop a crush on him, so he turned back to her father and asked, “How come you knew who I am without me telling you?”
“Shoot, you reckon there’s anybody in this part of the country who ain’t heard of Smoke Jensen?” Hannon said. “Probably everybody west of the Mississippi knows who you are, and plenty east of there, too. And when you get right down to it, we’re neighbors.”
Smoke chuckled.
“That’s true. We’ve just got that big old ridge between us.”
Sara Beth spoke up again, saying, “That ain’t all, Mr. Jensen. When I was hidin’ from those fellas this mornin’, I heard ’em talkin’ about you.”
“What did they say?” Smoke asked.
“They were mighty pleased with themselves, rustlin’ cattle from somebody famous like you. They said you’d never find out how they were gettin’ the cows off of your range.”
“That was mighty confident of them,” Smoke said.
“How do they get those cows over the ridge?” Hannon asked. “I didn’t think there was any way.”
Smoke hesitated, but only for a second. Ezra Hannon struck him as an honest man, and Smoke prided himself on being a good judge of character.
“They didn’t bring the cattle over the ridge,” he said. “There’s a tunnel through it. An old underground river, from the looks of it. The far end of it was sealed off until recently, I’m pretty sure of that.”
“A tunnel?” Hannon repeated. “I never saw anything like that.”
Smoke used his thumb to point south.
“It’s three or four miles back in that direction, at the top of a rocky slope.”
“Well, that explains it. My range don’t run that far, so I don’t have any call to go down yonder.” The rancher scratched his jaw. “Although I’ve been down there a few times, lookin’ for stock that strayed. You’d think I would have seen it.”
“You’d think so,” Smoke agreed. “Maybe this end of it was covered up until recently, too.”
Sara Beth looked at her father and asked, “Pa, you think this has anything to do with that blastin’?”
“You know, you might be right,” Hannon said.
“Blasting?” Smoke asked. “Somebody was using dynamite down there?”
“Yeah, a couple of months ago. We heard the explosions. Sounded like thunder, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.”
“Did you ever see anybody, or have any idea who was doing it?”
“Nope. Just heard those big ol’ booms.”
That was something to think about, Smoke mused. An explosion on the western side of the ridge could have exposed this end of the tunnel.
The question was, who in these parts had been using dynamite a couple of months ago?
He had a hunch that when he found out the answer, he would also find the kingpin behind the rustling.
Chapter 14
Smoke and his men were on their way again before midday, leaving the Hannon ranch behind them.
“That Sara Beth gal is sort of pretty,” Cal ventured as he rode beside Smoke and Pearlie.
The foreman hooted with laughter.
“Sweet on her, are you?” he asked Cal. “I’m sure her pa would let you marry her. He’d get an unpaid ranch hand out of the deal, to help him run that little greasy-sack outfit.”
“Dadgum it, nobody said anything about gettin’ married!” Cal’s face flushed. “Anyway, I’m too young to get married. I’ve still got too many wild oats to sow. I reckon an old man like you wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Son, I sowed more wild oats than you’ll ever see in your life,” Pearlie maintained.
They kept up their banter while Smoke thought about everything the Hannons had said. His instincts told him the answers were waiting for him in Bitter Springs.
It was midafternoon when they reached the flats and not long after that when the buildings of the settlement came into view ahead. They formed a single block, scattered somewhat irregularly along both sides of what passed for a street.
As the riders entered the town, Cal looked around and started reading some of the signs aloud.
“McKendree’s Mercantile and Trading Post. McKendree’s Saloon. McKendree’s Livery Stable. Looks like one family owns just about everything in town.”
“Or one man,” Smoke said. It wasn’t unusual for the founder of a settlement to dominate its businesses.
The store was the biggest building. It and the two saloons all sported false fronts. Th
e rest were drab, single-story structures built of weather-faded wood.
There was a café to the right, across from the livery stable, that didn’t sport the McKendree name on its sign. BITTER SPRINGS CAFÉ, it read simply. Smoke angled his horse toward it, and the rest of the men from the Sugarloaf did, too.
A couple of men sat on a bench on the store’s front porch. Smoke sensed their eyes following the newcomers. Over at the McKendree Saloon, a man rested his forearms on top of the bat wings in the doorway and peered over them as smoke curled from a thin black cigarillo clamped between his teeth. Smoke figured there were a number of other eyes watching them as they rode along the street, as well.
He dismounted and looped the ’Palouse’s reins around a hitch rack that leaned like it would fall over in a strong wind. It wouldn’t hold the horses if they wanted loose badly enough, but these animals were all well-trained and wouldn’t stampede without mighty good reason.
“We all goin’ in?” Pearlie asked as he and the other men swung down from the saddles as well.
“Why don’t a couple of you stay out here and keep an eye on things?” Smoke suggested. “I know you’re all hungry since we didn’t have any breakfast or lunch, but I’ll have somebody else spell you as soon as they’ve eaten.”
Two of the men spoke, volunteering for the job. The others trooped inside, their spurs jingling and their boots thudding on the rough wooden floor.
The Bitter Springs Café didn’t look like it did a lot of business. The windows weren’t particularly clean, and the curtains that hung over them were dusty. Smoke saw a cobweb or two in the ceiling corners. Half a dozen tables covered with blue-checked cloths sat to the left, with a lunch counter and stools on the right. A board on the wall behind the counter had the menu scrawled on it.
Only one table was occupied. A youngish, sandy-haired man in a tweed suit and a string tie sat at it, but he wasn’t eating. He had a lot of papers spread out on the tablecloth in front of him and was marking on some of them with a stub of a pencil.
Another man had taken one of the chairs from the same table and pulled it over next to the wall, where he sat with the chair tipped back and a Mexican sombrero pulled down over his face. He seemed to be asleep.
The third and final man in the café stood behind the counter. The apron he wore told Smoke he was probably the proprietor. Given the lack of business, he was most likely the cook, too, and swept out the place in the morning along with every other chore that needed to be done.
Which wouldn’t be easy, because the man had only one arm. The empty left sleeve of his shirt was pinned up.
He was stocky and florid faced, with gray hair and a mustache. He gave Smoke and the other men a nod and said, “Howdy, boys. You come for lunch? I don’t get many customers this time of day, but I got a pot of stew still on the stove.”
“Stew will be fine,” Smoke said, “especially if you’ve got coffee to wash it down with.”
“I sure do. Sit anywhere you want. I’ll bring your food and coffee to you.”
“Just set it on the counter,” Smoke said. “We can get it.”
“Suit yourself. Don’t let the fact that I’m a cripple bother you, though,” he added bluntly. “I’m used to it. Don’t even think about it anymore. Cannonball took this left arm of mine clean off at Antietam, you know. Like to bled to death before they got me to the field hospital. Came pretty close to dyin’ there, too.” The man shook his head. “Nasty place, hospitals. Just downright nasty.”
The man sitting at the table glanced up. Light from outside reflected on the lenses of the spectacles he wore.
“Joe has a talkative nature,” he said. “Indicative of the fact that he doesn’t see very many people. I think Esteban and I are his only regular customers these days.”
“That ain’t strictly true, Dr. Kingston,” the counterman said. “There’s a little mouse comes in here just about every day lookin’ for something to eat. He ain’t much for payin’ his bill, though.”
Smoke nodded to Pearlie and the other men, indicating that they should sit down. He went over to the table where Kingston sat and held out his hand.
“Name’s Jensen,” he said.
“Dr. Charles Kingston,” the other man said as he rose to his feet and shook hands. He was an inch or two taller than Smoke, with broad shoulders under the brown tweed coat. His grip had plenty of strength in it, too.
“You’re a medical man, are you?”
“Oh, no,” Kingston replied with a shake of his head. “I’m not that sort of doctor. I’m a geologist. I work for a mining company back East.”
“This isn’t really mining country,” Smoke commented.
Kingston smiled.
“Not at the moment, no. But perhaps it will be, someday. My job is to search for areas that hold the potential for future endeavors.”
“You think there might be gold or silver around here that nobody’s found yet?” Smoke asked.
“Or copper or zinc or any number of other elements that might prove profitable.” Kingston nodded toward the papers on the table. “I’ll admit, though, that my reports haven’t been promising so far.”
Joe started setting bowls of stew and cups of coffee he had filled on the counter. Smoke’s men helped themselves. Smoke said, “I guess I’d better get some of that food while there’s still enough to go around.”
“Why don’t you come back and join me, Mr. Jensen?” Kingston invited. “You strike me as an educated man.” He paused, and then added dryly, “There aren’t an abundance of them around here. No offense, Joe.”
“Oh, I ain’t offended,” the counterman said. “I can read and write and cipher, but the things you talk about are as far over my head as Pike’s Peak, Doc.”
Smoke got a bowl of stew and some coffee and carried them back over to Kingston’s table. He pulled out a chair with his foot and sat down.
“You’re wrong about me being an educated man, Doctor, at least if you’re talking about formal schooling,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot from friends of mine, though. I used to know a fella who could quote for hours from Shakespeare and Homer, and if you wanted to talk philosophy or natural history, he was your man. Used to be a professor back East before he decided he liked fur trapping better. Not to mention the fact that I’m married to a schoolteacher.” Smoke chuckled. “I reckon that’s an education in itself.”
Kingston smiled and said, “I expect you’re right about that. Do you know anything about geology, Mr. Jensen?”
“Dirt and rocks, things like that?” Smoke shrugged. “Only what I’ve learned by riding over them, and sleeping on them some nights.”
“It’s a fascinating subject. You can find almost every different sort of geological formation here in Colorado.”
“I imagine you can. The state’s got all sorts of territory in it.” Smoke sipped the coffee, which was strong and hot. “What do you do, go around digging holes?”
“Or blowing them out with dynamite,” Kingston said.
That was exactly the question Smoke had been working his way around to, and he hadn’t even had to ask it. Kingston had just volunteered the information.
“Then that was you doing that blasting about fifteen miles down the valley a while back?”
Kingston’s smile turned into a frown.
“I didn’t trespass on your land, did I? I was told that most of the valley is open range—”
Smoke held up a hand to stop the explanation.
“No, I just heard somebody talking about it,” he said. “We’re not from around here.”
“I see. Well, in that case, yes, I did some excavating in that area.” Kingston waved a hand at the papers. “But as I said, the results weren’t promising.”
“Uncover anything unusual, even if it wasn’t gold or silver?”
“Not really.”
Smoke nodded and started eating the stew. So far the conversation had been casual, but his brain was working furiously, considering the possibilities.
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Dr. Charles Kingston didn’t seem like the type of hombre who’d be running a gang of wideloopers, but Smoke thought there was a good chance Kingston had uncovered that tunnel through Gunsight Ridge with his blasting. That didn’t mean he had to be tied in with the rustlers, because somebody else could have come along and found the tunnel mouth after one of Kingston’s explosions revealed it.
On the other hand, the geologist might be the ringleader. Smoke had only known the man for a few minutes, so he couldn’t really come to a conclusion about that either way.
If Kingston was tied in with the rustlers, or was even their boss, he would know who Smoke was and could easily guess that Smoke and the rest of the men from the Sugarloaf had trailed the stolen cows up here. In that case, Kingston would have to deal with the threat, which meant Smoke and his companions would be in danger as soon as Kingston got word to his gang.
If Kingston didn’t have anything to do with the rustling, then Smoke wasn’t risking anything by talking to him. But the only way to find out which of those various scenarios was true was to keep probing.
“Did you happen to see anybody bring a herd of cattle through here earlier today?” Smoke asked. There were no pens in Bitter Springs, so the stolen cows weren’t being held here.
“No, but I haven’t been here all day,” Kingston replied. “Esteban and I just got back not long ago ourselves. I was checking out some hills to the east. Esteban’s my assistant, by the way. He drives the wagon and helps load and unload the equipment.”
Smoke glanced at the Mexican, who still appeared to be asleep. The man could have been pretending, of course.
The café’s front door opened, drawing Smoke’s attention. The man who came in was about as broad as he was tall. He gave that impression, anyway. His prominent gut extended in front of him like the prow of a ship. He wore a dusty black suit, but nobody was ever going to mistake him for a preacher. His moon-shaped face bore too many marks of dissipation and decadence for him to be a sky pilot. His head was bald under a black derby, and a red beard stuck out from his jaw like a brush.
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