“The Widow Tucker was mighty grateful for the return of her cattle,” Walt drawled.
“Walt told her we worked for you, Smoke. She flew off the handle at first, but calmed down some when Walt an’ me explained how you had taken the stock from rustlers and sent us to bring them back.”
Walt offered a new possibility. “Way I see it, she might even be willin’ to consider the chance you didn’t kill her husband.”
Jeff York reacted to it first. “I think that’s something worth looking into, Smoke.”
“When I can prove who did kill her husband then I’ll be glad to talk to the woman,” Smoke replied stubbornly.
“Wait a minute, now,” Jeff urged. “You need a secure place to operate from, right? My reading of our Sheriff Jake Reno tells me that when brains were being passed out, he was behind the door. When we start stirring things up around Socorro, there’s bound to be some real serious hunting around for you. The last place Reno would think to look for you, has to be the ranch of the man you’re accused of murdering.”
Jeff’s words received careful consideration. “You may have a point, Jeff,” Smoke allowed. “At least it might be worth looking into.”
“If a lawman vouches for you, and a famous Arizona Ranger at that,” Jeff added with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, “it might get the widow to see you in a different light.”
“You reckon to handle this yourself?”
“Why not, Smoke? It’s the strongest card we’ve got to play right now.”
Smoke Jensen took a final sip of coffee. “Walt and Ty are going to poke around a little, see if they can get a line on Stalker. I’m headed south of Socorro. We’ll meet in San Antonio three days from now. Between now and then, Jeff, see what you can set up.”
Martha Tucker studied the silver badge pinned on the vest of Jeff York. He wore clothes a cut above the average range hand, was well-spoken, and no doubt was who he claimed to be. Still, she considered his proposal outlandish.
“I’m not certain I’m ready for what you have told me, Ranger York.”
“Mrs. Tucker, I’ve known Smoke Jensen for years. In all that time I’ve never known him to do a dishonorable thing. What motive would he have to kill a total stranger?” “But he was found beside my husband’s bod—body.”
“Unconscious, as I understand it. Tell me everything you know about . . . what happened.”
For the next ten minutes, Martha Tucker related all that she had been told about her husband’s death. Jeff York listened with intense interest. When she had finished, Jeff pondered for a moment before speaking.
“Taken with what Smoke told me, there’s no doubt that someone arranged things to make him look guilty. For one thing, your husband was shot with a .45. Smoke carries twin ,44s. Always has.”
Martha nodded. “Go on.”
“Smoke was found with the single holster strapped around his waist. Yet, when he escaped from the jail, his own guns and their holsters were found in the sheriff’s desk. How would you suppose they got there?”
“I have no idea.” Martha sighed heavily. “It doesn’t appear that the sheriff, or the man he sent out here to tell me about it, has been entirely honest with me.”
Jeff grinned in anticipation of success. “Not in the least.”
“But why would you come over here from Arizona to look into it?”
“Like I told you before, Mrs. Tucker, Smoke Jensen is my friend. We’ve fought together before. And he’s always stood up for what’s right. At least, couldn’t you hear him out? Give him an opportunity to tell you what he knows.”
Martha Tucker’s face lightened, and a soft smile of acquiescence lifted the corners of her mouth. “Yes. I suppose it’s the least I can do.”
Cuchillo Negro’s face darkened with the fury of his outrage. They had been running off the Pen-dik-olye for three suns now. But to come upon such a scene as this threatened to make him break his resolve to keep their actions on the reservation. Three children, killed without reason, the girl ravaged before she died. He looked up sharply as Tall Hat spoke.
“I know their village, their families.”
“You will carry the message to them?”
“Yes. They will want to come and care for their children.”
“We will find the white men who did this. Their end will not be easy,” the war chief declared flatly.
He sent men out looking for signs. They soon found plenty in the cairns of stones and stakes that marked the boundary of a claim. At the direction of Cuchillo Negro, the warriors scattered these items over a wide area. Faint traces of shod hoofprints pointed the way the interlopers had left the creek bank.
“Follow the trail,” Cuchillo Negro ordered two skilled trackers. “We will come along behind.”
“If they leave the reservation?” Ho-tan asked.
Black Knife looked back at the ruined face of the little girl. “We will go after them.”
The sign left by the white men meandered through the White Mountains, roughly eastward, and downhill toward the land of the Zuni and Tuwa people. Diligently, the Apaches followed. They came upon the site of a carefully disrupted night camp. When Cuchillo Negro saw it, he spoke his thoughts aloud.
“These men know us well. They took care to see that no sign of their camp could be noted. Your eyes are clever, Waplanowi. Now see if you can bring me to them before this day is over.”
White Eagle beamed with pride at the chief’s compliment. “Zigosti is wiser than I. He says their fire burned two sleeps ago. We will not find them before nolcha sleeps.”
Cuchillo Negro frowned. “We travel together from now on. The Pen-dik-olye seem in no hurry. By tomorrow we might catch them.”
Wink Winkler mopped his brow with a large bandanna. “I’m shore glad we’re shut of them mountains. I began to see an Apache behind every tree.”
“There ain’t that many Apaches around these parts, Wink,” Randy Sturgis replied. “Though I’ll admit I’m glad they prob’ly not follow us into New Mexico.”
The two hard cases sat on a red-orange mesa that overlooked the Rio San Francisco outside Apache Creek, New Mexico. Randy, who could read on only a third-grade level and had quit school at the age of ten, was fortunate not to know how the small community had acquired its name. If he had, he would not have been nearly so confident. Quint Stalker stood with them, giving his horse a blow and considering their remarkably good luck in escaping the Apaches, who had no doubt set out after them.
“We’re not out of it yet, boys. We’d best put more miles between us and the White Mountains.”
“Awh, we’re safe enough here, Quint,” Randy protested. “These critters is near to run into the ground. They gotta have a rest. Us, too. From up here, you can see for miles. No way any Injuns could sneak up on us.” Quint worried that around awhile, then nodded, his mind changed. “Right. We can rest the horses and catch our breath. But no fires after dark, hear? Be sure what you do build is small and smokeless.”
For all their precautions, Quint Stalker and the three members of his gang learned the extent of their error in judgement shortly before midnight. A dozen Apache warriors rose up in the darkness and fired a shower of arrows into their camp. The first volley failed to find flesh, but awakened two of the targets.
“What the hell?” Randy Sturgis blurted. Then by weak starlight, he made out the familiar silhouette of an Apache. “Ohmygod! It’s Apaches, Quint, it’s Injuns!”
“I know that, damnit. Make a run for the horses.”
“Injuns ain’t supposed to fight at night,” Randy wailed.
Quint Stalker’s .44 Merwin and Hulbert barked and produced a flare of yellow-orange that illuminated more of the warriors. “Someone forgot to tell that to these bucks.”
By then the other pair had been roused. They added to the volume of fire and momentarily held the Apaches in check. Another volley of arrows hissed and moaned through the air. Wink Winkler howled and came to his bare feet.
“My arm! There�
��s an arrow shot clean through it.” Quint Stalker put a bullet in the chest of the Apache nearest him, snatched up his bridle, and ran for the horses. If they lived through this, he reckoned, they’d face a lot more hell, being barefoot and without saddles, food, or a change of clothing. Another Apache materialized out of the gloom at the picket line. Quint coolly pumped a .44 round through the warrior’s heart. Low, menacing whoops and the soft rustle of moccasins added haste to his fumbling efforts to slip the headstall over the twitching ears of his horse, and shove the bit between fear-clamped teeth.
Randy Sturgis appeared at his side. “Wink’s bad hurt. There’s three Apaches jumped him.”
“I’ll fix your bridle, go back and help him.”
Doubt and fear registered clearly in the dim light. “That’s a hell of a lot of Injuns back there.”
“Do it anyway. I never leave a man who ain’t dead,” Stalker snarled.
“Might be that’s already the case,” Randy opined. Gunfire erupted from two locations on the small mesa, which disproved for the moment Randy’s expectation. A hard shove from Quint Stalker sent him back to the melee. Halfway there, he encountered Wink Winkler and Vern Draper.
The arrow still protruded from both sides of Wink’s left forearm. He had been cut across the chest and a chunk of meat was missing from his right shoulder, where a war hawk had bitten deeply. Vern cut wild, glazed eyes to Randy, and gestured over his shoulder.
“Damn near got myself punctured back there,” he panted. “But I freed Randy from those devils.”
“Let’s make tracks,” Randy urged.
Quickly they rejoined Quint Stalker. Bridles fitted in place, the outlaws made ready to mount. Randy and Vern lifted Wink astride his mount. Then Vern gave Randy a leg up. Quint Stalker got Vern Draper on his horse, then vaulted to the back of his own. By then the Apaches had maneuvered into position close enough to see their targets in the dark.
More arrows sung their deadly songs as the white men rode fearfully away toward the trail that led off the mesa. Cuchillo Negro raised his trade musket to his shoulder and squeezed off a round that ended the evil career of the first to violate little Sky Flower. The big .64 caliber ball drove a hand-width chunk of shattered spine through the lungs and heart of Randy Sturgis.
Back arched suddenly, Randy did a back flip over his mount’s rump. He landed hard on the reddish soil of the nameless butte that overlooked the San Francisco River at Apache Creek.
Eleven
Five of Quint Stalker’s ne’er-do-well hard cases lounged in front of the Tio Pepe cantina in the little town of San Antonio, New Mexico. They listlessly passed a bottle of tequila from hand to hand, drank, spat tobacco juice, or rolled smokes. One of them, Charlie Bascomb, perked up somewhat when a stranger rode into town on a big-chested roan.
“Hey, don’t he look like that feller we’s supposed to be huntin’ down?” Bascomb asked his companions.
Weak-eyed Aaron Sneed squinted and dug a grimy knuckle into one pale blue orb. “Nuh-uh. Don’t think so. Last I heard, he was supposed to be up north a ways, in the Cibolas.”
“I for one,” barrel-chested Buck Ropon declared, “am glad to hear that, Aaron. After I heard what happened to them boys that went along with the sheriff, I’m not so certain I want to tangle with the likes of Smoke Jensen.”
“Turnin’ yeller, Buck?” Charlie taunted. “ ’Sides, them boys was alone most times. They’s five of us. I say us five can take any Smoke Jensen, or the devil hisself if it came to that.”
Unwittingly, Charlie Bascomb had cast their fate in a direction none of them would have wanted, and which none of them later liked in the least.
After the stranger entered the general mercantile across the way, Charlie kept on worrying aloud. Like a big, old tabby will a little, bitty mouse, it finally wore down the caution so wisely held by Buck Ropon. Rising to his boots, Buck adjusted the drape of his cartridge belt across the solid slab of lard on his big belly, and nodded in the direction of the general store.
“I reckon you’re gonna keep on about that until we know for certain, ain’tcha?” Buck Ropon groused.
Charlie screwed his mouth into a tight pucker. “Wouldn’t do no harm to get a closer look.”
“Are you crazy?” a heretofore silent member of the quintet demanded. “What if it is Smoke Jensen?”
Charlie grinned widely, his eyebrows and ears rising with the intensity of it all. “Why, then, we’ve got his butt and a thousand dollars reward!”
Inside the mercantile, Smoke Jensen ducked his head to miss the hanging display of No. 4 galvanized wash-tubs, buckets, washboards, and various pieces of harness. A wizened old man with a monk’s fringe of white hair around a large expanse of bald pate glanced up through wire-rimmed half-glasses, and peered at his customer.
“What’ll it be?”
“Howdy,” Smoke addressed the man. “I could use some supplies. A slab of fatback, couple of pounds each of beans, flour, sugar, a pound of coffee beans, some ’taters.”
“Yessir, right away.” The merchant made no move to fill the order.
“Better throw in a can of baking powder, some dry onions, and a box of Winchester ,45-70-500’s if you’ve got them.”
“Ummm. That’s for that new Express Rifle, ain’t it? I don’t have any.”
In a moment of inspiration, Smoke amended his list. “Then throw in a dozen sticks of dynamite. Sixty percent will do.”
“Don’t stock that, either. You’ll have to go to the gunsmith. He’s got a powder magazine out back of his place.”
“Thank you. Uh . . . I’ll take me a couple of sticks of this horehound candy,” Smoke added as he reached for the jar.
“You got youngun’s?” the seam-faced oldster asked suspiciously.
“No Smoke replied with a smile. Truth was, Smoke Jensen had always been partial to horehound candy.
The storekeeper took in the double-gun rig: the right one slung low, butt to the rear, the left set high, canted so as to present an easy reach for the front-facing grip. A gunfighter. That fact screamed at the merchant. Hastily, to cover the tremor in his hands, he set about packaging Smoke Jensen’s supplies. Smoke, meanwhile, rolled the sweets in a sheet of waxed paper and twisted the ends closed. He stuck his prize in his right shirt pocket, under his fringed leather vest.
When the small stack of purchases had been tallied, Smoke paid for them and removed a rolled-up flour sack from a hip pocket. Slowly, carefully, he put each item inside and hefted the load.
The clerk had a dozen questions forming in his mind— but caution kept him silent. He stood behind the counter and watched his customer head for the door. Then he tilted his chin and shot a glance beyond the tall, powerfully built stranger. He saw the five hard cases in the street, facing his store. He gulped forcefully and licked dry lips with a suddenly arid tongue. How he wished he had taken seriously the suggestions of steel shutters for his windows.
Smoke Jensen stepped out onto the abbreviated boardwalk that extended porchlike around one side, and along the wider front of the general mercantile. It also fronted the next building on the main street. No doubt the structures had been built at the same time, by the same man. Blazing, afternoon sun came from the right angle to blind the eyes of Smoke Jensen to all but five pairs of legs, stuffed into an equal number of boots, arranged in a semicircle that curved out into the street and blocked all avenues of egress. All that left him was a fight, or a cowardly flight back through the store and out the rear. Through the distortion of heat waves, Smoke heard a hoarse whisper.
“It’s him, right enough.”
“What we gonna do?”
“Well, for one thing, we won’t even have to shoot him. He’s got the sun in his eyes. An’ he ain’t got nowhere to go to get away. Let’s jist jump him, boys.”
Smoke Jensen sat the sack of his supplies on a bench in front of one big display window, his vision gradually clearing. He raised his left hand in a cautioning gesture.
“I think b
oth your ideas are wrong,” said Smoke blandly.
Suddenly, three of the men launched themselves at him. Smoke stepped in on one with groping arms. He grabbed a wrist and pivoted on powerful legs. His attacker spun away. When Smoke released him, he hurtled sideways into a shower of glass as a display window broke. He landed in the midst of a selection of bolts of cloth. Bleats of pain came from him, accompanied by the sustained tinkle of more falling shards. Smoke had already turned to face his next threat.
Two hard cases rammed into him at the same time. For all the tree-trunk strength of Smoke’s legs, they bore him off his boots. Smoke managed to turn slightly in the air and take them with him. They toppled through the open space created by the shattered window.
“Ow! Gadang, I’m cut,” one outlaw wailed, and released his hold on Smoke Jensen.
Immediately Smoke flexed his right knee and drove it into the belly of the hard case. Forcibly ejected from the display counter, he slammed painfully into a four-by-four upright of the awning over the boardwalk. His ribs could be heard breaking like dry sticks. A painful howl tore from his throat. Before Smoke could get to work on the other, hard hands clamped on his shoulders and strong arms yanked him into the store.
“You’re gonna git yours, Jensen,” Charlie Bascomb snarled.
“I’m gonna kill him!” the outlaw with the broken ribs shrieked. “Let me at him. I’ll kill him.” He stumbled through the door, fingers curled around the flashy pearl grips of his six-gun. “Get outta my way, Charlie!”
Charlie got; but before he could fully register what happened, Smoke Jensen had recovered from his manhandling, drew, and fired. Smoking lead pinwheeled the crazed gunman. He dumped over, arms flying wide. His released Colt sped from his hand and broke a glass display case. A wail of protest came from the merchant, now crouched behind his counter. He had cause for further complaint a moment later, when the thug in the window reared up and threw a wild shot at Smoke Jensen.
Cunning of the Mountain Man Page 10