“Sleep well,” Jeff offered.
“You know it’s funny, but I never do the night before a big fight,” Smoke responded on his way to the bunkhouse.
Twenty-two
Smoke Jensen saw at once that the time they had taken to prepare for the attack on the B-Bar-H had a double edge. It had given Benton-Howell the opportunity to strengthen his defenses. Instead of penetrating the outer ring of hastily made revetments on the north, they had to go around to the east, because of reinforcements who now patrolled where none had been before. It took some doing, and cost several hours to move slowly enough not to reveal the presence of their force of some twenty-five men and the wagon. Smoke oversaw the operation with patience and good humor.
“Look at it this way,” he advised a grumbling ranch hand from the Tucker spread. “The longer goes by without an attack on the B-Bar-H, the more restless and bored those second- and third-rate gunhands are going to get. When we do hit, it will shock them right out of their boots.”
“When do we hit them, then?”
“Tonight, well after dark, when all of them are relaxed and off their edge. The big thing is to get a hole cut in the outer defenses, wide enough to drive the wagon through without being detected.”
“We have enough shovels along,” Jeff York added as he rode up beside the buckboard being driven by Smoke Jensen. “Should go fast.”
“That is if they aren’t as thick around there as on the north,” a gloomy Ranger commented.
“Ralph, you always look on the dark side,” Jeff snapped.
“He has a point,” Smoke Jensen injected. “Even if Benton-Howell doesn’t have enough reinforcements now to cover the whole perimeter, we’ll have to get rid of those on the east without making a sound. Knives and ’hawks if you’ve got them,” he concluded through the scant opening between grimly straight lips.
Darkness had come an hour before and Pearly Cousins had given strict instructions to the gunmen who had accompanied him not to light up a smoke during their time on watch. It was hard enough seeing before the moon rose, let alone to be blinded by the flare of a lucifer. He yawned and stirred in his saddle. Pearly had been up late the night before, and had only five hours sleep in the past two days. We’re stretched too thin, Pearly thought to himself. Best be checking on the lookouts along the east side of the wall. Some of them aren’t wrapped all too tight.
Pearly didn’t find the rider at the northeast corner. “Must be patrolin’,” he muttered aloud. He turned south.
Close to where he expected to find two of the eight men guarding this side of the defenses jawing instead of doing their work, he came upon a riderless horse. That was something Pearly hadn’t expected. It ignited the first suspicions.
“Lupe, you takin’ a leak, or what?” Pearly asked in a muted voice.
When he received no answer, Pearly edged his horse forward and caught up the reins of the abandoned mount. Then he started inward to seek the negligent sentry. He did not go far before he dimly saw a huddled form on the ground. The black silhouette of a big Mexican sombrero two feet from the body identified it as Lupe. His alarms jangling now, Pearly dismounted and crouched beside the unmoving man.
Pearly rolled Lupe onto his back. Pearly saw that Lupe’s throat had been slit from ear to ear. Stealthy motion caught Pearly’s eyes, as a huge human figure rose from the brush directly in front of him. He heard a soft swish a moment before the tomahawk in the hand of Smoke Jensen split Pearly’s skull to his jawbone.
Smoke wrenched his ’hawk free and cleaned it on the dead outlaw’s shirt front. He tucked it back behind his belt, and set off for the spot he judged to be directly in line with the ranch house. When he reached the place, he found the other night stalkers there ahead of him.
“Had an extra one to take care of,” he explained. “We had better get started.”
Taking turns at the dirt barrier, the lawmen spent only half an hour opening a space wide enough to admit the buckboard. Smoke drove, while Jeff led the mountain man’s roan stallion. The Arizona Rangers and ranch hands formed a crescent-shaped line to right and left.
A mile inside the outer defenses, Smoke called a halt. “Time to set the primer charge,” he announced tightly.
With that accomplished the posse started up again. Smoke had allowed enough fuse for what he thought approximated twenty minutes. He would light it a moment before they topped the rise to the east of the house. Then he would set the team in a gallop, and make ready for the rest of the plan. If it didn’t work the way he expected if the fuse burned too quickly, then he would never know it.
“Good luck,” Jeff York said tightly thirty minutes later, as the lawmen dropped back to let the wagon take the lead.
Smoke Jensen lit the fuse, and slapped the reins lightly on the rumps of the wheelers. The team dug in, the sixteen hooves of the draft animals pounded the ground with increasing speed. They crested the steep swale, and the velocity increased. Smoke snapped the reins again. He stood upright now, a small rope wrapped around his gloved left hand. The rumbling of the buckboard’s wheels drowned out the sound of the mounts of the lawmen with him.
Closer loomed the mounded dirt that formed the inner fortifications. Smoke Jensen drove straight at the parapet. Flame lanced at the wagon from half a dozen places. Still Smoke remained upright, swaying with the erratic motion of the heavily laden buckboard. The vehicle careened onward. Closer, ever closer ... the blackness of the hastily erected defenses filled Smoke’s field of vision. He pulled slightly on the cord in his left hand felt the lynch pin loosen. Any time now . . . any . . .
NOW!
Smoke dropped the reins and yanked the lynch pin.lt came free, and the horses, undirected now, curved from the mass before them, the tongue carried between their churning bodies. Smoke jumped free and rolled in the tall grass. Suddenly Jeff York swerved in close at the side of Smoke Jensen. He trailed the reins of Smoke’s roan. Without breaking stride, Jeff flashed past. Smoke readied himself and leaped for the saddle horn. He caught it and swung atop his rutching stallion.
Immediately they all curved away and outward from the barrier. Five seconds later, the wagon struck the solid wall of dirt with a thunderous crash. A heartbeat later it exploded with a roar that came from the end of the world.
Waiting for an attack that might or might not come had started to get on his nerves. Geoffrey Benton-Howell paced the thick oriental rug in his study, hands clasped behind his back. His eyes cut frequently to the crystal decanter of brandy on the sideboard that formed part of a wall of bookshelves. No, that wouldn’t do, he thought forcefully.
This was no night to get lost in the heady fumes of the grape. Not any night was fit for tippling until that offensive son of a bitch, Smoke Jensen, had been hunted down and eliminated. Nearly a week had passed since Jensen and the Rangers had cleared out Socorro. It did little to improve his outlook to know that the town had filled up once again with eager fast guns. Most of the Rangers had disappeared and the remainder had forted up in the jail. He needed to get those new men involved in a search for Jensen. Benton-Howell sighed heavily, almost a gasp, and crossed to the door.
He leaned through the opening and called down the hall to the large sitting room. “Miguel, I need you in here for a moment.”
When Miguel Selleres entered the paneled study, Benton-Howell had arranged his thoughts in order. Selleres likewise declined any liquor. He seated himself in a large, horsehair-stuffed leather chair and rested elbows on the arms. He steepled his long fingers and spoke over them. “So, you have grown tired of waiting, amigo?”
“Just so. I want you to take two of the better gunmen and ride into Socorro. Organize that rabble, and set them off hunting for Smoke Jensen.”
“I thought we had agreed to make him come to us here.”
“We did. Only I don’t think it is working.”
Suddenly, as though to put the lie to Benton-Howell’s pronouncement, a ragged volley of gunfire broke out at the dirt barricade that surrou
nded the house and barn. There followed a moment of silence, then a violent crash of splintering wood. Then the darkness washed away in a wall of sheer whiteness. The sound of the explosion, like a thunderclap directly overhead came a second later. The shockwave blew every window on that side of the building inward.
It knocked books from the shelves and set the brandy decanter to dancing. Stunned to immobility, the two plotters stared at each other. Fighting for words, Benton-Howell got control of his voice first.
“They’re attacking! Take charge of the men. There’s no time to head for town. We have to stop them.” “Someone else can go, Stalker perhaps, and bring the others back. They could hit the Rangers in the rear.” “It’s half a day in and the same back,” Benton-Howell reminded. “By then we could all be dead.”
“Or worse, on the way to jail,” Miguel Selleres riposted.
Shuddering, Benton-Howell dismissed such weakening visions and began to organize the defenses. “Get torches lit; the men can’t see which way to shoot. Are the sandbags in place around the outer walls?”
“Yes, since yesterday. Both floors.”
“Have men at every window. Bolt the doors.”
Sparks from the fuses in single sticks of dynamite began to make twinkling trails through the black of night. The blasts began to rout men caught in the open yard. Some bolted for the covered passageway that led to the well nearest the house. They made it without incident, only to be forced to cringe on the ground when holes began to appear in the wooden walls, as hot lead cracked through at chest level.
Sharp blasts illuminated the yard as the dynamite began to explode. Their flashes strobed the action of the disoriented outlaws in the ranch yard. Two went down, shot through the chest, and a screech of agony came from another who had caught a short round in the groin. With a muffled curse, Miguel Selleres rushed from the room to bring order out of the chaos.
Fully a third of the defenders had been knocked off their feet by the tremendous explosion, Smoke Jensen noted as he and Jeff rode through the breach created in the parapet. Dust and the acrid odor of dynamite smoke still hung in the air. Jeff pointed to the rubble of scattered earth.
“If they’d used gabions, that wouldn’t have worked” the Arizona Ranger said.
“What are those?”
“Sort of tubelike baskets, made of reeds or thin tree branches; they’re used in building fortifications.” Jeff looked sort of embarrassed. “I learned that from General Crook, when I scouted for the army.”
Smoke grunted. “Good thing the one who built this didn’t know it.”
Bullets cracked past Smoke and Jeff, and they saw that some of those not effected by the blast had recovered enough to offer resistance. One of the Tucker hands yelped and clapped a hand to a profusely bleeding wound in his right arm. The shooter didn’t have time to celebrate his victory Smoke Jensen put a .44 round in his ear, and sent him, brainless, onto the outlaw level of Hell.
Suddenly a pack of dogs charged into the yard from a run behind the house. One launched itself and sank fangs into the leg of an Arizona Ranger. The lawman screamed as the teeth savaged him. He swung with the barrel of his revolver. It made a hollow sound when it struck the flat, triangular head of the bristling mastiff.
That had no effect on his grip though. He hung on, his body weight sagging downward ripping his fangs through tender flesh. Tallpockets Granger whirled in his saddle and shot the vicious monster through the head. It fell away with a whimper and twitched violently on the ground. Another of the beasts, crazed by the explosive blasts, leaped on the back of one of the hired guns. His shrieks could be heard until the huge dog reached his throat, h’
“Keep clear of them,” Smoke called out. “They’ll do us more good than harm.”
Smoke pulled a fused stick of dynamite from his saddlebag and lit it from a cigar clinched in his teeth. He hurled it toward the house. It hit the window frame and bounced off. A moment later it went off with a blinding flash and roar.
More quickly followed from the Arizona Rangers. Two more of the savage dogs died in attempts to attack strangers among the outlaw defenders. Smoke rounded the house and found himself facing two hard cases with six-guns cocked and ready. His right hand dropped to the curved butt-grips of his .44 Colt. One of the gunslingers fired before Smoke finished his draw.
His bullet cut a hot trail along Smoke’s left side, below the rib cage. Then Smoke had his Peacemaker clear and in action. It bucked sharply, and he emptied the saddle of the second outlaw Hammer back and another sharp recoil as the .44 belched. It spat hot lead that ended the ambitions of a would-be giant-killer. Smoke chucked another stick of explosives through a window and spun away.
The blast, muffled somewhat, blew out two walls of the kitchen. Plaster dust and powder smoke made a heavy fog that was all too easy for the hard-pressed gunhawks to hide in. Smoke knew that the noise they had made would soon attract the larger portion of the gunslick army from their outer defenses. He had taken that into consideration in his plans. Now, he decided would be the time to pull out. He worked the thin leather glove off his right hand and put thumb and forefinger between his lips.
He whistled shrilly and headed at once for the gap blown in the defenses. The Arizona Rangers and Tucker ranch hands streamed behind him. Only a few random shots followed them. That and the shrill, patently hysterical curses of Geoffrey Benton-Howell.
In the cold hard light of dawn, Geoffrey Benton-Howell and Miguel Selleres surveyed the damage. Every window in the house had been blown out again. Two walls of the kitchen had been scattered over the ranch yard and the second-floor extension sagged precariously over what remained. Food had to be prepared in the bunk-house and the outdoor rock-lined fire pits. Those of the hired guns who remained shivered in the chill, early morning air as they waited in line for coffee, beans, and fatback.
Half an hour later, as the partners accepted plates of food from the grizzled range cook, a patrol sent out at first light retamed.
“Then Rangers blew holes in the barricades in half a dozen places on their way out,” Charlie Bascomb, who had led them, reported. “Any time they want, they can pour through on us like water through a sieve.”
“Damn him to eternal hell!” Benton-Howell blurted. “It’s the doing of Smoke Jensen, you can be certain of that.”
“¡Oye, amigo! No te dejes poner los verdes. He is only a man,” Miguel Selleres jokingly told his partner.
“I am not letting him pull the wool over my eyes,” Benton-Howell snapped angrily. “You know as well as I what that man has done to us. It’s not natural, not . . . human! We started this project off with him waiting a lynch mob in the Socorro jail. Now he has nearly destroyed my home.”
“What do you propose?” Selleres prompted. Benton-Howell considered that a while. “It’s obvious that the ranch is not secure enough. There are ample gunmen waiting in Socorro to assist us. If we move the Tuckers into town, Smoke Jensen will hear of it. We can draw him out and make him fight on ground of our choosing.”
Selleres played the devil’s advocate. “What if he’s waiting for us on the way?”
Benton-Howell shaped his plan aloud. “We’ll take everyone from here, form a screen of protection around us and our hostages. Once we reach town, we’ll be safe enough. You’ll see.”
Walt Reardon met the raiding party when Smoke Jensen brought the men back to the Tucker ranch. His grim expression alerted Smoke to possible new problems. He and Jeff met with the ex-gunfighter in the kitchen over coffee and sweet rolls.
Walt chomped on a yeasty cinnamon roll, and washed it down with a long swallow of Arbuckle’s Arabica before revealing what brought him to the ranch. “Something big is building up in town.” Walt cut his eyes to Jeff. “The Rangers you left me have been overpowered one by one, and completely disappeared. Socorro’s runnin’ chock-a-block with ne’er-do-wells and gunslingers. Somethin’ big’s cookin’, I can feel it in my bones.”
“Any ideas?” Smoke prompted. “We did
a fair job of rattling Benton-Howell and his gunhands on the ranch.”
He looked at the table, chagrined by the admission he had to make. “We were too outnumbered to make a push to get the Tuckers out.”
Walt shook his head. “I got this feelin’ somethin’ big is comin’ on. If nothin’ else, we need to find those missing Rangers.”
Smoke Jensen came to his boots, thumbs hooked in the front of his cartridge belt. “I agree. Cuchillo Negro’s warriors are needed to guard the ranch, so I suggest we take the Rangers we have on hand any hands who volunteer, and head for Socorro.”
Twenty-three
Clear, sharp eyes, undimmed by long afternoons and nights of drinking and carousing in the saloons of Socorro, first spotted the large plume of dust that rose from the horses of the Rangers and ranch hands. It took little time to realize that trouble rode toward town. Even so, the alert gunhawk placed on lookout on the north edge of Socorro waited until he could count heads, make certain who and how much trouble was headed his way. Then he sent one of the hungover wannabes to report his findings.
“Go to the Exchange Hotel and tell Mr. Benton-Howell that twenty-three men are headed this way. Tell him Smoke Jensen and that Ranger are in the lead.”
The two-bit gunslick ambled away, while he held his head with one hand and licked dry lips, wishing for a little hair of the dog—no, wolf—that had bit him the night before. He found the lordly Englishman in the saloon of the Exchange, which gave him an excuse to get a drink.
First he had to report, which he did cringing a little from the expression of wrath that grew on Benton-How-ell’s’ face. When he delivered the message, he turned toward the bar. “No drinking. Not today,” Benton-Howell declared imperiously. “Every man must be sober for what is sure to come.” He turned to Quint Stalker, who sat at a table drinking coffee, which he had surreptitiously laced with rum in defiance of the orders of the big boss.
Cunning of the Mountain Man Page 21