“He has like hell! His name’s York, right enough, but it’s Jeff York, Arizona Ranger,” Concho Jim grated out.
Strong hands closed on Jeff York’s arms before he could react or try to make a break. Benton-Howell gave him a disbelieving look, then cut his eyes to Concho Jim. “You’re sure of this?”
“Damn right I am. He got me locked up in the territorial prison for six years, killed three of my partners, too.” Unseen, but witnessing it all, Walt Reardon made a quick evaluation of the situation. Two guns against all those present made for poor odds. Better that he get away from here and find Smoke Jensen. He edged his way out of the crowd and made for the livery barn and his horse.
Frowning, Benton-Howell lowered his voice and addressed the gunhands holding Jeff. “Let’s not make a spectacle of this. Take him away quietly. Lock him in the tool shed. We’ll deal with our spy later, after our distinguished guests have eaten and drunk enough to forget about it.”
Careful to create the least disturbance possible, the hard cases lifted Jeff York clear of the ground and carried him to a shed out of the direct sight of the partying politicians. There they disarmed him and threw him inside. A drop bar slammed down, and Jeff heard the snick of a padlock.
By three o’clock that afternoon, most of the guests of Geoffrey Benton-Howell had forgotten the small disturbance in the side yard of the ranch house. Great mounds of barbecued beef and goat (cabrito) filled the serving tables, where a splendid buffet had been laid out. Laughing and talking familiarly, as colleagues do, they lined up to pile Benton-Howell’s largess on their plates. Some tapped a toe to unfamiliar strains of music.
Mariachi musicians played their bass, tenor, and alto guitars, Jaliscan harp, and trumpets with gusto. Songs such as La Golandrina, Jalisco, Cielo de Sonora, and El Nino Perdido, won applause and praise from the visitors from Washington. Three white-aproned cooks toiled over the pots of beans, bowls of salsa, skillets of rice, platters of corn boiled in its shucks, and, of course, the savory meat, as they ladled and served the festive crowd. Beer, whiskey, and brandy had flowed freely since mid-morning. It kept everyone in a jolly mood.
Yes, his fiesta was going exceedingly well, Geoffrey Benton-Howell thought to himself as he gazed on this industrious activity. It continued to go well until a whole watermelon, taken from among half a dozen of its twins in a tub of icy deep well water, exploded with a wild crack, and showered everyone in the vicinity with sticky, red pulp.
* * *
Smoke Jensen shifted his point of aim and destroyed a line of liquor-filled decanters in a shower of crystal shards that cut and stung the now terrified guests. He levered another .45-70-500 round into the chamber, and blasted a round into a large terracotta bowl of beans, showering more of the politicians with scalding frijoles. That made it time to move on to the next position.
Two hours earlier Smoke had met with Walt Reardon. The ex-gunfighter had come upon Smoke with the news of Jeff York’s unmasking and capture. Quickly he panted out his account of events. He concluded with, “They put him in a little shed out of the way of the party.”
“With the right distraction, do you think you could get in there and get Jeff out?”
Walt grinned. He had a fair idea of what Smoke Jensen considered the “right distraction.”
“Damn right.”
“Then, let’s ride.”
They made it back unseen to the ridge overlooking the B-Bar-H headquarters. Walt ambled his mount down a covered route back to the party. He soon found he had not been missed. No one, in fact, paid him the least attention. He took up a position close to the tool shed and waited for Smoke to join the dance.
Smoke Jensen had a clear field of fire over the whole ranch yard. He used it to good advantage, firing four more rounds, then reloading the Express rifle on the move to another choice location. Two of Benton-Howell’s hard cases had more of their wits about them than the others. They grabbed up rifles and began firing back.
Their spent rounds kicked up turf a good two hundred yards short of Smoke’s last position. Smoke knelt and shouldered the .45-70-500 Express, and squeezed off another shot. The bullet made a meaty smack when it plowed into the chest of one rifleman. The dead man’s Winchester went flying, as he catapulted backward and flopped and twitched on the ground. His cohort made a hasty retreat. Then Smoke went to work on the nearest buffet table.
A stack of china plates became a mound of shards as Smoke’s rifle spoke again. A short, stout congressman from Maine yelped, and popped up from the far side of the table like a jack-in-the-box. He lost his expensive bowler hat to Smoke’s next round. With a banshee wail, the portly politician ran blindly away from the killing ground.
He crashed headlong into a Territorial Federal judge. They rebounded off one another, and the little man wound up on his butt. “I say, Judge, someone is trying to kill us,” he bleated.
“Congressman Ives, you are an ass,” the judge thundered. “If whoever is out there wanted to kill us, we’d be dead. Like that outlaw thug who returned fire. Now, get ahold of yourself, man, before someone thinks you’re a coward.”
When another watermelon showered those nearby with wet shrapnel, Walt Reardon considered the confusion to be at maximum. Lips set in a thin, grim line, he made his move. He approached the shed from the rear. Rounding one side Walt placed himself behind a guard posted by Benton-Howell. With a swift, sure move, Walt drew his six-gun and screwed the muzzle into the sentry’s right ear.
“I’ll have the key to that lock, if you don’t mind,” Walt growled.
“What the hell—!”
“Do it now, or I’ll put your brains all on one side of your head.”
“You son of a bitch, you don’t have a chance,” the gunhawk displayed the last of his rapidly waning bravado.
“I’m talking the outside,” Walt snarled, and gave his Colt a nudge.
It took less than a second for the thoroughly cowed hard case to fish a brass key from his vest pocket. His hand trembled, when he raised it above his shoulder. Walt Reardon snatched the key with his left hand.
“Thanks, buddy,” he told his prisoner a moment before he clubbed him senseless with the barrel of the Peacemaker.
Walt bent to the lock on the door of the shed, as Smoke shifted his aim to the house. Smoke had already scattered the striped-pants politicians in utter panic. Some had fled to the carriages that had brought them, and driven off in reckless abandon. Others dived into corrals, Smoke noted with amusement, where fresh, still-warm cow pies awaited them.
Now the last mountain man listened to the satisfying tinkle of glass, as he shot out windows and trashed the interior of one room after another. A sudden gout of black soot from a chimney told Smoke a ricochet had hit a stove pipe. Half a dozen females—painted ladies provided by Benton-Howell to entertain the politicians— came shrieking out every door visible from Smoke’s position.
While he kept up this long-range destruction, Smoke kept an eye on an unpainted shed, its boards faded gray by the intense New Mexico sun and desiccating effects of the desert. It was there, Walt Reardon had told him, that Geoffrey Benton-Howell had confined Jeff York. Smoke saw the guard stiffen, and a hand appear with a six-gun poked in the hapless fellow’s ear. Good work, Smoke mentally complimented Walt. Now it’s time to make a stir down there.
When Walt opened the door and Jeff came stumbling out into the light, Smoke shifted his aim once more. Two of the outlaw trash Benton-Howell hired walked rapidly toward Walt, each with a hand on a gun. The third mother of pearl button on one hard case centered on the top of the front post of Smoke’s Express rifle. The weapon slammed reassuringly into his shoulder, and a cloud of powder smoke obscured the view. A stiff northwesterly breeze cleared it away in time for Smoke Jensen to see the impact.
Shirt fabric, blood, and tissue flew from the front of the gunhawk’s chest in a crimson cloud. It slammed him off his boots, and he hit the ground first with the back of his head. No headache for him, Smoke thought. He shi
fted his sights to the second saddle tramp in time to see him jackknife over his cartridge belt and pitch headlong into hell. Smoke cut his eyes to where he had last seen Jeff and Walt.
A thread of blue-white smoke streamed from the muzzle of Walt’s six-gun. He and Jeff advanced on their challengers, and Jeff stooped to retrieve both of their weapons. Smoke took advantage of the lull to shove more fat rounds in the loading gate of the Winchester Express. Time to move, he decided.
From his fourth location, Smoke had a clear view of the other side of the headquarters house. The windows quickly disappeared in a series of tinkling, sun ray-sparkling showers. Faintly, Smoke Jensen made out the rage-ragged bellow of Benton-Howell.
“Goddamn you, Smoke Jensen!”
At least he knew who had paid him a visit, Smoke allowed with a smile. From his final position, where he had left his roan stallion tied off to a ground anchor, Smoke Jensen gave covering fire, while Walt Reardon and Jeff York burned ground out of the B-Bar-H compound. Smoke chuckled as he mounted and set off obliquely to join them, well out of range and sight of the terrorized mass of milling men below.
“Smoke Jensen?” The name echoed through the raddled politicos after Geoffrey Benton-Howell’s furious bellow
Livid with outrage, their host stomped around the flagstone veranda of his house, looking bleakly at the broken windows, shredded curtains, the bullet holes in the interior walls. He cursed blackly and balled his fists in impotent wrath.
“Everything is under control, gentlemen. Don’t let this act of a mad man interrupt our celebration today. Come, fill your plates, get something to drink. You there, strike up the music.” Then Benton-Howell turned away and hid his bitter anger from the still-shaken politicians. “I know it was him,” he shouted to the skies as though challenging the Almighty. “It was Smoke Jensen. Somehow . . . he’s . . . found . . . out.”
Most of those present had no idea of what he meant. Miguel Selleres, who had taken a slight nick in the left shoulder, knew only too well. He hastened to the side of his co-conspirator. “Softly, amigo, softly! It would not do to bring up such unpleasant matters in the presence of our guests. You have suffered enough loss today.”
“How do you mean?” Benton-Howell demanded. “When the shooting stopped, all but two of your working hands rolled their blankets and departed. They don’t like being shot at.”
Benton-Howell blanched. “Damn them! Cowards, the lot. Oh, well, they were only fit for nursing cows anyway.”
“One does not run a ranch without someone to nurse the cows, £como no?” Selleres softened his chiding tone to add, “I can lend you some men, until you can hire more. Or clear up this difficulty with Smoke Jensen.” “Thank you, my friend.” Benton-Howell clapped Selleres on his uninjured shoulder. “Now, I want the—ah—other hands to assemble outside the bunkhouse. Tell those hired guns of Quint Stalker’s to hunt down Smoke Jensen and kill him, or don’t come back for their pay!”
Fifteen
Much to his discomfort, Forrest Gore had to deliver orders to the hard cases hired on to do Benton-Howell’s dirty work. With the boss gone, leadership devolved on Payne Finney, who had sent him out to take over the boys in the field. Finney was making slow progress in his recovery from the pellet wounds given him by Smoke Jensen. If he could speak honestly, Finney would prefer to have nothing further to do with Smoke Jensen. Absolute candor would reveal that he feared the man terribly.
With good cause, too, Payne Finney told himself as he sat in the study of the B-Bar-H, covering ground already talked out with Geoffrey Benton-Howell. He had never seen a man so skillful that he could divide a shot column between two targets. Benton-Howell’s next words jolted him.
“I don’t care if you have to use a buggy. I want you out there looking for Smoke Jensen.” Half of the influential men he had gathered at the ranch had failed to return after the shooting ended. It put a damper on the conviviality of those who remained. He hadn’t even been able to broach the subject of cutting away a portion of the White Mountain Apache reservation.
“I take my orders from Quint, the same as all the others,” Payne began to protest. “I’m still weak from being shot. I doubt the men would do what I told them.” Benton-Howell's fist hit the tabletop like a rifle shot. “They had damned well better! Stalker isn’t here now. You give the orders; I’ll see they are obeyed.”
Payne Finney winced at the pain that shot from the knitting holes in his lower belly as he came to his boots. He accepted the finality of it with bitterness. “I’ll do my best.”
Half an hour later, Payne Finney rode out of the B-Bar-H on the seat of a buckboard. His face burned with the humiliation of being reduced to such a means of transportation, and for being talked down to like some lackey on the mighty lord’s tenant farm. His saddle rested in the back, along with supplies he carried for the men searching for Smoke Jensen. His favorite horse trailed behind, reins tied to the tailgate. With effort, he banished his resentment and thought of other things.
If Finney had his way, Smoke Jensen would be run to ground in no more than two days. After all, the man was flesh and blood, not a ghost. He had to eat and sleep and eliminate like any other man. And Payne Finney had brought along the means of ensuring that Smoke Jensen would be found.
Seated right behind him, tongue lolling, was a big, dark brindle bloodhound. All they would have to do is find a single place Smoke Jensen had made camp, and put the beast on his trail. That’s why Finney gave the ambitious estimate of two days. He raised himself slightly off the seat, and his right hand caressed the grip of his .44 Smith and Wesson American.
“Goodbye, Smoke Jensen, your butt is mine,” he said aloud to the twitching ears of the horses drawing the wagon.
Forrest Gore had his own ideas about finding Smoke Jensen. “It’s goddamned impossible,” he declared to the five men gathered around a small pond in the Cibola Range.
“Smoke Jensen camped here last night. We all know that,” Gore lectured to his men. “Then he rode out to the west early this morning.”
He was wrong, but he didn’t know it yet. Ty Hardy had spent the night there, and ridden back to the Tucker Ranch shortly before first light. Two of the hard cases, suspecting that they chased the wrong will-o’-the-wisp, muttered behind gloved hands. A minute later, Smoke Jensen proved them right.
With startling effect, a bullet cracked over their heads and sent down a shower of leaves. Forrest Gore jumped upright and hugged the bole of a tree, putting its bulk between him and the direction from which the slug came. Then the sound of the shot rippled over the mountain slopes.
“We been set up,” another gunhawk announced unnecessarily. “That’s Smoke Jensen out there, and he’s got us cold.”
“I’m gettin’ out of here,” the fourth man announced.
“No! Wait,” Forrest Gore urged. “Keep a sharp eye. When he fires again, we can spot where he is, split up, and close in on him.”
Vern Draper snorted in derision. “By the time we get there, he’ll be gone.”
“Yeah, an’ firin’ at us from some other place,” Pearly Cousins added.
Forrest Gore gave their words careful consideration. They had been hunting Smoke Jensen for the better part of two weeks now. With always the same results. The bastard was never seen, and they got shot at. Maybe it wasn’t Smoke Jensen at all? With a troubled frown, Gore worked his idea over out loud.
“What if that’s not Jensen at all? What if it’s one of those hands of his, who broke up the lynch mob? It ain’t possible that he was down in San Antonio and leadin’ you fellers around by the nose up here in the Cibolas at the same time.”
“I don’t think it was him down there,” Cousins opined.
“Who else could do in four of our guys, and send Charlie Bascomb runnin’ with his tail ’twixt his legs?” Gore challenged. “I say we’re lookin’ in the wrong place. I say we leave whoever it is up here to hisself, and head south.”
“You better clear that with Quint,” Vern Dra
per suggested pointedly.
“Quint’s busy elsewhere. Payne sent me out here to help you find Smoke Jensen. I think he’s clean out of the area. So, we go where he is.”
Another round from the Express rifle of Smoke Jensen convinced the others to follow the rather indistinct orders of Forrest Gore.
Later that day, Smoke Jensen met with Jeff York and the hands from the Sugarloaf. They sat around a table in the bunkhouse at the Tucker ranch, cleaning their weapons and drinking coffee. Smoke made an announcement that caught their immediate attention.
“Looks like the searchers are being pulled out of the mountains. I think it’s time to pay another visit to the B-Bar-H.”
Jeff produced a broad grin. “I sorta hoped you’d do that. I want to pay my respects to Sir Mucky-muck.”
They rode out half an hour later. Ty and Walt went deeper into the Cibolas, to track and harass the hard cases with Gore. Also to determine where they might be headed. Smoke and Jeff covered ground at a steady pace.
An hour before nightfall, they reached the tall, stone columns with the proud sign above that declared this to be the B-Bar-H. Smoke studied the fancy letters a moment. Then he cut his eyes to Jeff.
“I think this is a good place to start,” Smoke declared.
He loosed a rope from his saddle, and Jeff did the same. It took them only a minute to climb the stone pillars and affix their lariats to the edges of the sign. Back in the saddle, they made solid dallies around the horns, and walked away from the gateway. When the ropes went taut, the metal frame began to creak and groan. Smoke Jensen touched blunt spurs to the flanks of his roan stallion, and the animal set its haunches and strained forward.
Jeff York did the same, with immediate results. A loud crash signaled the fall of the wrought-iron letters. Badly bent and twisted, the B-Bar-H banner lay in a cloud of dust, blocking the entrance road. Smoke and Jeff retrieved their lassos and chuckled at their mischief, as they cantered off over the lush pasture grass. The rest of Smoke Jensen’s plans contained nothing so lighthearted.
Cunning of the Mountain Man Page 14