“We are happy to be able to accommodate you, Señor. If you will please to sign the book?” When Smoke had done so, she continued her familiar routine of hospitality. “The rooms down here are much cooler, but the second floor offers privacy.”
Accustomed to the refreshingly cool summer days in the High Lonesome, Smoke Jensen opted for a first-floor room. The beautiful desk clerk nodded approvingly and selected a key. She turned back to Smoke and extended a hand comprised of a small, childlike palm and slender, graceful fingers.
“When Felipe returns with your saddlebags, he will show you to your room.”
“I think I can manage on my own.”
Her smile could charm the birds from the trees. “It is a courtesy of the Posada del Norte. We wish that our guests feel they are our special friends.”
“I’m sure they do. I know that I—ah—ummm—do.” Silently, Smoke cursed himself for sounding like an adolescent boy in the presence of his first real woman. He was spared further awkwardness by the return of the little boy, Felipe.
“Come with me, Señor,” the youngster said with a dignity beyond his nine or ten years.
After Felipe had unlocked the door to No. 12 with a flourish and ushered him inside, Smoke pressed a silver dime into the boy’s warm, moist palm. Although fond of children, Smoke Jensen preferred to watch them from a distance; he recalled his first impression of this little lad and curiosity prompted him to speak.
“Do you work here every day?”
“Oh, si, Señor, after school is over at media dia. It is my father’s posada.”
“Wouldn’t you rather be out swimming with your friends at the creek?”
An impish grin lighted Felipe’s face. “After my early chores, I get to go for a while. Until the people come for rooms, and my father rings the bell to call me back. Sometimes . . . when I’m supposed to be cleaning the stable, I slip away and also go on adventures.”
Smoke had to smile. “You remind me of my sons when they were your age.”
Felipe blinked at him. “Did you run a posada? And were your sons Mexican?”
A chuckle rumbled in Smoke’s chest. “No to both questions. But they were every bit as ornery as you. Now, get along with you.”
After Smoke had settled in, he strolled out to the central courtyard. The corridor that served the second floor overhung the edges of the patio, to form alcoves where tables were being set for the evening meal. More pretty Mexican girls draped snowy linen cloths at just the proper angle, while others put in place napkins, eating utensils, and terracotta cups and goblets. Next came clay pitchers that beaded on the outside from the chill spring water they held and bowls of fiery Southwestern salsa picante. Experience in Arizona, Texas, and Mexico had taught Smoke that prudent use of the condiment added a pleasant flavor to a man’s food.
Beyond the alfresco dining arrangements, a fountain splashed musically in the center of the courtyard. Desert greenery had been arranged in profusion, in rock gardens that broke up the open space and gave an illusion of privacy. On the fourth side of the patio, opposite his room, Smoke found a small cantina. Tiny round tables extended onto the flagstone flooring outside its door. Smoke entered and ordered a beer.
It came in a large, cool, dark brown bottle. Smoke flipped the hinged metal contraption that held a ceramic stopper in place, and a loud pop sounded. Hops-scented blue smoke rose from the interior. Smoke took his first swallow straight from the bottle, then poured the remainder into a schooner offered by the cantinero.
“You are new in town,” the tavern keeper observed.
“Yep. Just rode in today.”
“If you have been on the trail a while, Señor, perhaps you are hungry for word of what is happening in the world. I will bring you a newspaper.”
“Thank you,” Smoke responded, surprised and pleased by this shower of conviviality.
It turned out to be a week-old copy of the Albuquerque Territorial Sentinel. Most of the front page articles had to do with the financial panic back East, and events in and around the largest city in the territory. Smoke read on. The second page provided at least part of the answer to his dilemma, although he did not realize it at the time.
SURVEYORS
TO LAY OUT
WESTWARD ROUTE
Bold black letters spelled out the caption of the story. Smoke Jensen scanned it with mild interest. It revealed that survey crews would soon arrive to begin laying out the right of way for a new spur of the Southern Pacific Railroad. It would pass through Socorro and head westward to connect with Springerville, Arizona, Winslow, and the copper smelters being built south and west of Show Low.
Interesting, Smoke considered. If one had stock in the railroad or the right copper works. But it didn’t seem nearly as relevant as the small article on the third page, which featured an artist’s sketch of Smoke’s own likeness, and a story about the supposed murder of Mr. Lawrence Tucker.
From it, he gleaned that Tucker had been a long and respected resident of the Socorro area, with a large ranch on the eastern slopes of the Cibola foothills. He was survived by a wife, Martha, and three children, boys aged thirteen and seven and a girl nine. Tucker had been outspoken about the prospects of dry land farming, and used the techniques of the Mexican and Indian farmers, long time residents of the area. He also advocated the protection of those fields by the use of barbed wire.
Not a very popular position for a rancher to take,
Smoke mused. It had been enough to get more than half a hundred men killed over the past decade. Maybe Mr. Tucker had enemies no one knew of? Maybe someone, like Sheriff Reno, knew only too damn well who those enemies might be? Smoke put his speculations aside, along with the paper, and finished his beer. Leaving money on the mahogany for the barkeep, he left to stroll the streets and get a feel for the town.
It might be well to have a hidey-hole. The inn seemed a good one. Although, Smoke allowed with his face in the newspapers, and no doubt on wanted posters by now, it would be better to lay low in Arizona, until he could piece together more information. He had done well to scatter that posse. And it might be necessary to go back and scatter another, if he were to have that time of peace.
Early on the afternoon of the third day in Horse Springs, Smoke began to feel uneasy. A week had gone by since they had ridden out of Socorro. By now he should have heard from Walt Reardon and Ty Hardy. He would give them a couple of more days and then head west. With that settled, he turned in through the open doorway of a squat, square building with a white-painted, stuccoed exterior.
The odor of stale beer and whiskey fumes tingled his nose. No matter where in the world or what it was called, Smoke mused, a saloon was a saloon. A chubby, mustachioed Mexican stood behind the bar, a once-white apron tight around his appreciable girth. Two white-haired, retired Caballeros sat at a table, drinking tequila and playing dominoes. Smoke Jensen relaxed in this congenial atmosphere and eased up to the bar.
“Do you have any rye?” he asked.
“Bourbon or tequila.”
“Beer then.”
A large, foam-capped schooner appeared before him a few seconds later. The glass felt pleasantly cool to the touch. Smoke had grown to understand the inestimable value of the icy deep rock springs that had named the town. Smoke drank deeply of the cold beer, and a rumble from his stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since early that morning. He’d finish this and find a place to have a meal.
“Jeremy, you don’t have the sense God gave a goose.” The loud voice drew Smoke’s attention to the entrance.
“There you go again, Zack, bad-mouthin’ me. I tell you, that feller made it sound so downright good, I jist had to trade horses with him.”
“Only it done turned out that he had two gray horses, the other one all swaybacked and spavined. Which he hung around your dumb neck.”
“Awh, Zack, tain’t fair you go bully-raggin’ me about that all the time. Hell, cousin, it happened a month ago! That’s old news.”
�
�It’s an old bunko game, too,” Zack replied dryly. Smoke Jensen marked them to be local range riders. But with a few differences, that could make them dangerous. For instance, the way they wore their six-guns, slung low on their legs, holsters tied down with a leather thong. The safety loops had been slipped free of the hammers. The weapons were clean and lightly oiled all the cartridges in their loops shiny bright. No doubt, they fancied themselves good with their guns, Smoke surmised. They had silver conchos around the sweat bands of their hats, sewn on their vests, and down the outside seam of their left trouser legs.
A regretful sigh broke from Smoke’s lips. Almost a uniform in the Southwest for young, tough-guy punks. Smoke faced the bar, head lowered, and tried not to draw their attention. The one called Zack looked hard at the big-shouldered man at the bar and turned away. Smoke finished his beer, the taste nowhere near as pleasant as it had been, and pushed off from the bar.
Outside, he headed toward an eatery he had seen earlier. He had noticed a sign, hand-lettered on a chalkboard, that advertised HOY CARNITAS. His limited Spanish told him that meant they were serving carnitas today. He had become acquainted with the savory dish while in Mexico to help two of his old gunfighter friends, Miguel Martine and Esteban Carbone. Thought of the succulent cubes of pork shoulder, deep fried over an open, smokey fire, brightened Smoke’s outlook considerably.
He had finished off a huge platter of the “little meats,” with plenty of tortillas and condiments, and another beer, when he looked up from wiping the grease from his face and saw the same pair of salty young studs again. They stood in the middle of the street, hands on the butts of their six-guns, eyes fixed on the doorway of the bean emporium.
At first, Smoke didn’t know if they had gotten so drunk that they couldn’t figure how to get in the eatery. But when he rose from his table, paid the tab, and stepped out under the palm frond palapa that shaded the front, he soon learned that not to be the case.
“B’god yer right, Zack. It’s him, all right.”
“Yeah, Smoke Jensen,” Zack sighed out. “An’ we’ve got us a tidy little re-ward cornin’, Jeremy.”
Eight
Seems these boys had read the same newspaper he had seen, Smoke surmised. The reward was something new. Too bad about that. He spoke to them through a sigh.
“Don’t believe everything you read, fellers.”
“We believe this right enough. You’re Smoke Jensen, and they’s a thousand dollars on yer head.”
“Not by the law. So there’s no guarantee you’d get the reward if you lived to collect it.”
“What you mean by that?”
Smoke sighed again. “If I am Smoke Jensen, there’s not the likes of you two who can take me. Not in a face-on fight.”
“I ain’t no back-shooter, an’ I think we can,” Zack blurted.
Smoke let Zack and Jeremy get their hands on their irons, before he hauled his .44 clear of leather. Jeremy’s eyes widened; it caused him to falter, and he didn’t have his weapon leveled when he pulled the trigger.
A spout of muddy street fountained up a yard in front of Jeremy’s boot toe. Although a hard violent man when he need be, Smoke Jensen took pity on the young gunny. He shot him in the hip. Jeremy went down with a yowl, the streamlined Merwin and Hulbert flew from his hand, and he clutched his wound with desperation. Smoke shifted his attention to Zack.
Zack’s jaw sagged in disbelief. He hadn’t even seen Jensen draw, and already the gunfighter had let ’er bang. Shot Jeremy, too, and he was rattlesnake fast. His consternation held Zack for a fraction of a second during which he saw eternity beckoning to him from the black muzzle of Smoke Jensen’s Colt.
“Nooooo!” he wailed and tried feverishly to trigger a round.
For this one, Smoke Jensen had no mercy. He had taken note earlier of the notches carved in the walnut grip of Zack’s six-gun. That told a lot about Zack. No real gunhawk notched his grips to keep score. Killing men was not a game. They didn’t give prizes for the one with the most chips whittled out. The only thing that came from winning was the chance to live a little longer. Smoke Jensen knew that well. He’d been taught by an expert. So, he let fly with a .44 slug that punched a new belly button in Zack’s vulnerable flesh.
Shock, and the impact, knocked Zack off his boots. He hit hard on his butt in the middle of the street. He had somehow managed to hold onto his Smith American, and let roar a .44 round that cracked past the left shoulder of Smoke Jensen. New pain exploded in the right side of Zack’s shoulder, as Smoke answered in kind with his Peacemaker.
“Damn you to hell, Smoke Jensen.” Bitter pain tears welled up in Zack’s eyes and Smoke Jensen seemed to waver before him like a cattail in a stiff breeze. Supported on one elbow, he tried again to raise his weapon into position. His hand would not obey. It drooped at the wrist, the barrel of the Smith and Wesson canted toward the ground.
“Y-you done killt me, Jensen,” he gasped past the agony that broiled his body.
“It was your choice, Zack.”
“I—I know.” Zack sucked in a deep breath and new energy surged through him.
His gun hand responded this time, and he willed his finger to squeeze the trigger. The loud bang that followed came before his hammer had fallen. Zack couldn’t figure that one out. He understood better an instant later, when incredible anguish blossomed in his chest and a huge, black cavern opened up to engulf him.
“You di’n’t have to kill him,” Jeremy sobbed from his place on the ground.
“The way I see it, he pushed, I pushed back.” Smoke made a tight-lipped answer.
Despite his misery, Jeremy had managed to work free his sheath knife. He held it now by the blade. A quick flick of his right arm as Smoke Jensen turned in his direction, and the wicked blade sped on its way. It caught Smoke low. The tip slid through the thick leather of his cartridge belt and penetrated a stinging inch into meat. Smoke’s .44 blasted reflexively.
From less than three feet away, hot lead punched a thumb-sized hole between Jeremy’s eyebrows, mushroomed, and blew off the back of his head. Smoke eased up, let his shoulders sag. A sudden voice from behind him charged Smoke with new energy.
“¡Tien cuidado, Señor! They have a frien’.” Black pencil line of mustache writhing on his brown upper lip, the owner and cook of the cafe where Smoke had eaten, stood in the doorway. He pointed a trembling finger toward the balcony of the saloon across the street. Smoke followed the gesture and saw a man kneeling behind the big wooden sign, a rifle to his shoulder.
Fool, Smoke thought. If he thinks that sign will stop a bullet, he’s in for a surprise. The Winchester cracked once, and cut the hat from Smoke’s head as he returned the favor. Two fast shots from the pistol in the hand of Smoke Jensen put a small figure-eight hole in the sign and the chest of the sniper. With a clatter, the hidden assassin sprawled backward on the floor planks of the balcony.
In the silence that followed Smoke Jensen surveyed the carnage he had created. Damnit, he didn’t need to be caught knee-deep in corpses. This spelled more complications than he wanted to think about. He reloaded swiftly.
“No question of it, I’m in more trouble than before,” he muttered to himself To the Mexican cook, he added “The law will be coming soon. Tell them the man who did this is long gone.”
The smiling man shrugged. “There is very little law in this town, Señor. Only the alcalde—the mayor—who is also the jefe—the marshal, an’ also the juez ... el magistrado, ¿comprende?”
“I reckon I do. You’re saying you have a one-man city administration?”
“Seguro, si.” In his excitement over the confrontation in the street, the man had forgotten most of his English. “Where do I find this feller?”
A broad warm smile bloomed on the man’s face. He tapped his chest with a brown, chili-stained finger. “It is I, Señor.”
That made matters considerably less complicated for Smoke Jensen. Smoke recounted where he had first seen the would-be hard cases, and gave h
is opinion of what had sparked the attempt on his life. The mayor-police-chief-judge, his name turned out to be Raphael Figuroa, didn’t even ask if they had the right man. He looked at the human garbage in the street and shrugged.
“They are no loss. This is not the first time they have provoked trouble. Usually with tragic consequences for the other party. This is the first time they have been on the receiving end. You are free to go, or stay as long as you wish, Señor.”
“I’m fixin’ to pull out tomorrow morning,” Smoke informed him. He did not give a destination.
Forty-six miles into Arizona, Smoke Jensen discovered why he had not been joined by his companions. Walt and Ty waited for him in Show Low, along with Jeff York. Smoke and the Arizona Ranger had a rousing, back-pounding reunion, and the four men retired to the saloon made famous by the poker game that had given the new name to what had once been Copper Gulch.
A drifter had played cards all through one night with the local gambler and owner of the town. His luck had run well and, on the turn of a card in a game of Low Ball, he had won title to Copper Gulch, which he promptly renamed Show Low in honor of his accomplishment. Or so the story goes.
“What’s this about you being wanted for killing a man, Smoke?” Jeff inquired, his pale bluish gray eyes alight with interest. “Don’t sound like the Smoke Jensen I know.”
“It’s a long story, Jeff. Just yesterday, I found out there’s a price on my head. A big one.” Smoke went on to explain what he faced. He concluded with, “So with a reward out, I had to figure that sheriff would be out hunting me again, and decided Arizona would be a safer place to stay while I worked it all out.”
Jeff York sat in silence a moment before responding to all Smoke had told him. “I’ll cover for you here in Arizona, of course. And I’d like to help. As much as I can.”
“How’s that? The governor got his hand cinched up to your belt?”
Cunning of the Mountain Man Page 7