Law of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Matthew was knocked out of the saddle by a slug that hit his left shoulder and tore out his back. But he held on to he could still see well enough to shoot. The boy leveled the Colt and shot the gun slick in the throat just as Rusty came galloping up, the reins in his teeth and both hands filled with guns.

  When Rusty had emptied his Colts; only one Bar V man was left in the saddle and he was hard hit and fogging it back to more friendly range, just barely managing to stay in the saddle.

  Rusty took one look at Cheyenne and cursed at the loss of a friend and another man who had helped in the uneasy settling of the West. Rusty hoisted Matthew back into the saddle, found his glasses for him, and tied Cheyenne across his saddle.

  “All hell is gonna break loose now, boy,” the redhead told the boy. He had inspected the boy’s wound and found it to be very painful but not too serious. The bleeding was slow, indicating that no major artery or vein had been hit. Rusty plugged the holes with a torn handkerchief and stabilized the arm in a sling.

  “Feels like to me it has broke loose,” Matthew said, his voice grim and old for his age. He looked at Cheyenne. “He was my friend.”

  “He was my friend, too, boy. Let’s ride.”

  Both Alan and Susie had raced back to the ranch compound, yelling as they ran. Alice started crying and Micky joined her.

  The boys wanted to ride after the kidnappers and shoot it out and rescue Miss Doreen. Jamie yelled them into silence and literally had to slap some sense into a couple of them. They would wait for Mr. Smoke and that was that. There wasn’t no point in going off half-cocked and getting killed.

  the saloon. “Not you agin!”

  “If this keeps up I’m going to get the feeling that you don’t like me,” Smoke said with a grin. “But of course,” he added, “you would be at the end of a very long list, I reckon.”

  Bendel shook his head. “That don’t seem to worry you much.” He returned the smile. “One thing about it, Mr. Jensen—with you around I don’t never have to worry about bein’ bored.” He drew Smoke a mug of beer and set it down on the bar.

  “I had hoped this place would not be filled up with Bar V riders.”

  “Stick around,” the barkeep said mournfully. “It will be.”

  “We won’t be here long. Just long enough to get supplies.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t bring that four-eyed kid with you. That youngster is so calm he spooks me.”

  “He’ll do to ride the river with, for sure.” Smoke sipped his beer while he waited for Walt to finish with his supply ordering. They were making a trip a week to resupply, for with fifteen growing boys to feed, the food went fast. And Rusty was no slouch when it came to grub. He could eat up a whole apple pie all by himself if the girls didn’t keep a good eye on him.

  Smoke heard the sounds of horses coming up to the post and inwardly he tensed.

  The barkeep cursed.

  “What’s the matter, Bendel?”

  “Some of Jud Vale’s hired guns ridin’ up. A whole passel of ’em.”

  Smoke sighed. “One of these days I’m going to get to finish a beer in peace.”

  18

  Doreen had been dumped into an upstairs bedroom. It wasn’t long before Jud opened the door, his arms filled with boxes and a big grin on his broad face. He dumped the boxes on the bed.

  “Them’s the finest gowns and underthings all the way from Paris, France,” he boasted. “Silks and satins and the like. And in that little box, they’s a diamond and ruby thing you wear in your hair. I forget what it’s called.”

  “Tiara?” she asked.

  “Yeah! That’s it, all right. I bought it all just for you, Doreen.”

  “But I don’t want any of these things!”

  Jud ignored that. Waved it away. Then he began to pout. “But I bought them just for you,” he said, a sulky tone in his voice.

  Doreen looked at the bulk of the man, lifting her eyes to his. She could plainly see the madness in his eyes; the same kind of madness she had refused—at first—to see in Clint’s eyes. Clint Perkins, Jud Vale’s own flesh and blood. And in that instant, she realized something else: that if she was going to survive, she had best humor Jud.

  But that thought, or warning, flew right out the window as Jud opened more boxes. Grinning at her, he laid the gold and jewel-encrusted headpiece on the bed and shook out the garment. “See what I bought for myself, Queen Doreen. My, oh, my, won’t we both look fine!”

  Doreen couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing and laughed until the tears were running down her cheeks.

  “You stop that this minute!” Jud screamed like a petulant child.

  But Doreen could not stop laughing. And her laughter became uncontrollable when Jud stamped his boot on the floor and began to jump up and down, behaving very much like a naughty boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  Her laughter almost put her on the floor. Where it failed, Jud’s fist succeeded. “You’re really not going to wear that on your head, are you?” she questioned, just as Jud swung a big fist.

  Doreen got her reply as her head exploded in pain and she lost consciousness.

  When Rusty brought Matthew in, the hysteria of the women vanished and they took over the doctoring of the boy while Rusty solemnly cut the body of Cheyenne loose and told Jamie and Leroy to get shovels and start digging. They’d wait and have the funeral in the morning. The body would keep that long.

  What to do about Doreen?

  Rusty didn’t know. He looked at Alan. “Boy, could you positive say in a court of law that Jud took her?”

  The boy looked at Susie. Both of them shook their heads. “No, sir,” the boy replied. “We was too far off to say positive it was him.”

  “What are you getting at, Rusty?” Alice asked.

  “He’ll hide her if anybody gets within ten miles of that ranch. You can bet he’ll have lookouts posted ever’where. He may be crazy, but he ain’t stupid.“

  “So we wait for Smoke to come back?” Susie asked.

  “That’s all I know to do.” Rusty would have liked to go charging into the mansion, both hands filled with Colts. But he was forced to put his anger and his feelings for Doreen aside and do his best to think logically, knowing that even if he should manage to reach the mansion without catching a slug, he would never breach the big house—not alive, and he would certainly be no good to Doreen dead. Or anybody else for that matter.

  He would wait for Smoke to return.

  Bendel looked out the dusty window. “Six of them, Mr. Jensen. I know two of them by name.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Blackjack Morgan and Lassiter. But them others look just as lough.”

  Smoke signaled for another beer with his right hand as his left hand touched the butt of his left-hand Colt. Of late, he had been loading the Colts up full. You never knew when that extra round might save your life.

  Boots and jingling spurs sounded on the porch of the trading post. The batwings squeaked open. Smoke did not turn around.

  Blackjack paused at the bar and spoke to Smoke’s back. “Well, well, boys. Look what we done come up on here. The famous gunfighter, Smoke Jensen. You reckon we ought to bow down or something like that?”

  His friends laughed. Smoke did not acknowledge the presence of any of them. He sipped at his beer and spoke to Bendel. “I thought I just heard a jackass bray, Bendel. You certainly do have a very strange clientele.”

  Bendel got a sudden case of the jumps and moved to the end of the bar, carrying a couple of bottles of whiskey with him. He knew the drinking habits of Blackjack and Lassiter and could guess at the tastes of those with them. A tray of shot glasses were bottom’s up on a towel near the end of the bar.

  “You callin’ me a jackass?” Blackjack demanded in a loud voice.

  Smoke slowly turned to face the man. “Why ... it isn’t a jackass, after all. It’s Blackjack. Excuse me, Morgan. I must have been mistaken.”

  “That’s the damnedest apology
I ever heard,” Lassiter said.

  “Who said I was apologizing.” Smoke cut his eyes to the gunfighter.

  “What’ll it be, boys?” Bendel hollered.

  “We ain’t deef,” one of the bounty hunters said sourly. “Whiskey.”

  Blackjack still stood by the bar, facing Smoke. Smoke had noted that all the men wore their guns loose in leather, free of hammer thongs. And Blackjack wanted to try Smoke something awful; Smoke could read the challenge in the man’s dark eyes.

  “Don’t do it. Blackjack,” Smoke spoke the words softly, so softly that only Morgan could hear them. “It isn’t worth it, friend.”

  “Don’t give me orders, Jensen.” Blackjack’s returning words were equally soft, less than a whisper; a scant moving of the lips. “I want you before the Almond Brothers find you.”

  Smoke had heard of the Almond Brothers. A trashy bunch of no-goods that had drifted out of the Midwest some years back. A pack of back-shooting scum who would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes. Jud was certainly scraping the bottom of the barrel by hiring that bunch.

  “If they take me, Blackjack, it won’t be facing me.”

  “They’ll still have the ten thousand and you’ll still be just as dead.”

  Smoke smiled and turned his back to the man.

  “Don’t you turn your backside to me!” Blackjack snarled, putting out his hand and dropping it to Smoke’s shoulder, spinning the man around.

  Smoke hit him with a left to the belly and followed that with a beer mug to the side of Blackjack’s head, knocking the man to the floor.

  Blackjack was up like a rubber ball, blood streaming down his cheek from the gash on his head. He swung a fist and Smoke ducked under it, again popping the man in the gut and bringing a grunt of pain.

  Blackjack connected with a left to Smoke’s head that backed him up. Blackjack was no stranger to brawls and he could punch.

  Smoke faked him with a left and Blackjack took the bait, grinning and dropping his guard. Smoke punched through the hole and erased the grin, as he connected with a right to the mouth that smashed Blackjack’s lips and loosened some teeth. Blackjack shook his head and came in swinging.

  Smoke sidestepped and stuck out a boot, sending the man to the floor, clubbing him on the back of the neck as he went down.

  With a curse, Blackjack got to his boots just in time to receive a left and right combination to both sides of his jaw that staggered and stunned the man. He fell back against the bar planking.

  Smoke pinned him there and went to work, smashing at the man with big work-hardened fists. Smoke flattened Blackjack’s nose and ruined his mouth. One of the man’s ears was swollen and pulpy and the gunfighter’s eyes were glazing over.

  Smoke stepped back and let Blackjack fall to the floor. The man did not move.

  Lassiter chose that time to stand up. “By God, Jensen, you’ll not do that to another good man,” and went for his piece.

  Smoke shot him.

  He drew, cocked, and fired in less than a heartbeat, his slug striking Lassiter in the belly and knocking him back against a table, splitting the wood right down the middle. Lassiter was drawing iron as he was falling and managed to get off one shot, which dead-centered the painting of a nude female hanging on the wall behind the bar.

  “Why, you sorry son!” Bendel hollered. “I paid good money for that.” He came up with a shotgun just as one of the bounty hunters was dragging iron.

  Lassiter lifted his six gun as blood was leaking from his mouth.

  Smoke shot him between the eyes just as Bendel’s shotgun roared, the buckshot creating a terrible mess at close range. The tom-apart bounty hunter was literally lifted off his boots and flung across the room. He bounced off a wall and fell to the floor, lying still in a bloody mess. Two of his buddies cursed and then tossed good sense and caution to the gods of fate as they grabbed for their six guns.

  Bendel gave one the other barrel just as Smoke shifted the muzzle of his Colt and let the .44 bang, the slug taking the second man in the chest and dropping him to his knees.

  The lone bounty hunter left alive lifted his hands out from his body and held them wide apart to show that he was out of this affair.

  Walt stuck his gray head into the gunsmoke-filled barroom. He held a six gun in his hand, the hammer earred back.

  “It’s over,” Smoke told him, just as Blackjack moaned on the floor and tried to sit up.

  Smoke jerked the man to his boots and spun him around, so he could see the carnage in the saloon.

  Blackjack’s eyes were swollen from the beating he’d just received, but he could see well enough to know that the best thing he could do would be to keep his mouth closed.

  “Get on your horse and ride, Blackjack,” Smoke told him. “And if you have any sense at all you’ll keep going and not look back until you’ve cleared a couple of counties.”

  Blackjack broke his silence. “Lassiter was a pal of mine, Jensen.”

  “Was is right.”

  “I’ll not let his death go unavenged.”

  “Then you’re a fool. As crazy as Jud Vale.” Smoke shoved him toward the batwings. “Get out of here, Blackjack. If you’re in my sight ten seconds from now I’ll kill you.”

  “And stay out of my saloon!” Bendel hollered. “All of you trash that work for the Bar V. I’m telling’ you now; pass the word: I’ll kill the first one of you that pass through those batwings. I’m tired of this.” He leveled his reloaded double-barrel, sawed-off express gun. “Move, damn you!”

  Blackjack moved.

  Smoke glanced at Walt. “Supplies loaded?”

  “All on the wagon.”

  “Let’s get back to the ranch. I suddenly got a bad feeling about this day.”

  Jackson took one look at Jud Vale and struggled to contain his laughter. At the same time he was fighting to keep from busting out laughing, he was making up his mind about the Bear Lake Fight, as it was being called by some.

  Jackson was switching sides.

  Jackson was a gunfighter, and a good one, but he had had a bad taste in his mouth about this fight right from the git-go. He just didn’t think it was right to fight women and kids and old men. And now he had heard that Jud Vale and Old Walt were really brothers, and that didn’t set well with him at all. He didn’t have any trouble understanding how brothers could hate each other; he’d seen that many times before. But in this situation, there wasn’t any reason for it. Come to think of it, there wasn’t any reason for any of this, and there damn sure wasn’t even one ounce of reason roaming around in Jud’s crazy head.

  And where in the hell did Jud come up with that costume he was struttin’ around in?

  Man looked like the fool he really was.

  Time to go, Jackson concluded, just about the time the lone hand come staggering in from the gunfight with Cheyenne and the kid.

  Jackson listened, then slowly walked to the bunkhouse to get his kit together. He rode out without being noticed. He headed for Box T range, but in a very roundabout way, going by the way of the trading post and stopping in for a drink of whiskey.

  That longing for a drink of whiskey just about cost him his life: when he stepped into the saloon he was looking down the barrels of a sawed-off shotgun.

  “Whoa!” Jackson said. “I’m friendly, Bendel!”

  “Not if you’re ridin’ for the Bar V, you ain’t.”

  “I quit ‘um. Jud Vale is as crazy as a bessy-bug. All the wrappin’ done come plumb off him.” He grimaced, remembering the sight of Jud all dressed up in that silly-lookin’ outfit. “In a manner of speakin’, that is. I figured I’d toss my saddle on a Box T horse.”

  Bendel lowered the express gun. “They need some help, for a fact. Have a whiskey, on the house.”

  “Don’t mind if I do. Smells like gunsmoke in here, Bendel.”

  Bendel told him what had gone down.

  Jackson sipped his whiskey and mulled over that bit of information. He would have liked to seen Blackjack
get the snot whipped out of him. If ever a man deserved a good butt-whippin’, Morgan did. Him and Lassiter and those others with that grand plan to ambush Jensen. That hadn’t set well with Jackson either, but by the time he’d learned of it, it had all blown over.

  Jackson thanked Bendel for the whiskey, stepped into the general store for some tobacco and cartridges, then headed out for the Box T.

  He was feeling better with every mile he put behind him.

  19

  “And I seen Jud sendin’ men out in all directions,” Jackson was wrapping it up for Smoke and Rusty and the others. “Ain’t no way we’re gonna bust Miss Doreen out of there with just two or three men and a handful of kids. I don’t think her life is in no danger. Don’t you ladies take this the wrong way now, ‘cause I think a man doin’ what Jud is gonna do against her will is wrong, but at least she’ll be alive.”

  “And you say Jud has really gone around the bend?” Walt asked.

  “Gone around the bend! Man, he is total loco. Walks around that big house with a gold crown on his head, all done up in diamonds and rubies and the like. And he wears a robe.”

  “You mean he’s wearing something like a dressing gown?” Smoke asked.

  “Hell, no! Excuse me, ladies. I mean one of them ear-mine robes that he had handsewn and all made up for him over in Russia.”

  “Ear-mine?” Alice questioned. “You mean ermine fur?”

  “Yes’um. That’s it. A white one. Comes all the way down to his ankles. He looks real stupid stompin’ around the house in that robe, wearing a crown on his head, and cowboy boots on his feet. I’m tellin’ y’all, it’s gettin’ to be awful weird around that place. Plumb spooky.”

  “Are the men laughing at him?” Walt asked.

  “Not to his face. He’s still totin’ a gun strapped around his waist. And that makes him look even dumber.”

  “But still dangerous,” Rusty added.

  “Even more dangerous,” Jackson told them. “ ‘Cause you don’t never know what a crazy man is goin’ to do.”

  They all agreed with that.

  Walt leaned back and scratched his head. “Well, let’s come up with some way to get Doreen out of that nuthouse. Anybody want to start?”