Matt Jensen, The Last Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “What? What do I have going for me?”

  “You have already killed,” Smoke said.

  Matt was quiet for a moment before he spoke. “I’m not proud of that, Smoke.”

  “Nor should you be,” Smoke answered. “Matt, the fact that you have killed is not a matter of pride. But it is a matter of survival.”

  “Survival?”

  “Yes. I want you to think about it every day. I want you to know that if you have to do it, you can kill a man without a second thought.”

  “All right,” Matt agreed.

  “There’s one more thing I want you to remember,” Smoke said.

  “What is that?”

  “Remember our talk about knighthood?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Matt, you now have an awesome power. You have the power of life and death. Only God, and the righteous, should ever have such power.

  “You aren’t God, so you must be righteous. Be a knight, Matt. Never abuse this power you now have.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Swear to me, Matt,” Smoke said. “Swear on the graves of your ma and pa that you will be a knight.”

  “I swear to you, Smoke. I will be a knight,” Matt said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gehenna

  The little town was hot, dry, and dusty. It had grown up in the middle of nowhere and now sat baking in the sun like a lizard. To the six riders approaching from the north, the collection of adobe and sun-bleached wooden buildings was so much a part of the land that it looked almost as if the town was the result of some natural phenomenon, rather than the work of man.

  Out on the edge of town a sign read:

  YOU ARE ENTERING

  GEHENNA

  Population Unknown

  THE LAW AIN’T WELCOME.

  IF YOU GOT NO BUSINESS HERE,

  GET OUT—OR GET SHOT

  On first glance, Gehenna looked like just about any other town in this part of the country, but that was on first glance only. A closer observation showed many differences.

  Gehenna was a town that existed, not in spite of having no law, but because it had no law. It was a robber’s roost, an outlaw’s haven, and Clyde Payson, Garvey Laird, Clem Tyson, Bart Ebersole, Poke Lawson, and Syl Richards were drawn to it for just that reason.

  “I’m so thirsty I’m spittin’ dust,” Clem said. “I aim to get me two beers an’ drink ’em both down afore I even take me a breath.” Clem smiled. “I aim to get me a good meal and a bottle of whiskey, then the best-lookin’ whore in town.”

  Poke laughed.

  “What’s so damn funny?” Clem asked.

  “There ain’t goin’ to be no good-lookin’ whores in Gehenna.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause whores that’s still good-lookin’ can make a livin’ somewhere else. They don’t have to come to a place like Gehenna.”

  “Then what the hell are we comin’ here for?” Clem asked.

  “We ain’t here for the whores,” Payson said. “We’re here ’cause there’s no law here.”

  “No law a’tall?” Syl asked.

  “Only the law that we make,” Payson said.

  As the six men rode into town, not one person gave them a second look. Stopping in front of the single saloon, they dismounted.

  A tall man dressed all in black stepped out onto the front porch and looked down at them.

  “You’re Payson, ain’t you?” he asked. “Clyde Payson?”

  “Yeah, you’ve heard of me?”

  “I’ve heard of you.”

  Payson smiled and looked at the others. “What do you think, boys? I’m famous,” he said.

  “You’ve come here to stay away from the law?”

  “That’s right,” Payson replied. Payson was still standing beside his horse, so that it was between him and the man who was addressing them.

  “It’ll cost you a hundred dollars to stay here,” the man said.

  “A hundred dollars? Says who?” Payson asked angrily.

  “Says me. You might say I’m the sheriff here. It’s my job to collect taxes from those who come to enjoy our hospitality.”

  “You’re the sheriff? I thought there wasn’t no law here,” Payson said.

  The man spat a stream of tobacco, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

  “Well, now, that ain’t entirely true,” he said. “We ain’t got no courts or judges, or jails or such. But we do have me.”

  “And who are you?”

  “The name is Loomis. Frank Loomis.”

  Payson was quiet for a moment before he answered. “Loomis. Frank Loomis,” he said. “Yeah, I’ve heard of you. You used to be a sheriff, didn’t you? Till you had a run-in with a U.S. marshal. You kilt ’im, I believe, and now you’re a wanted man yourself. So, how come you’re still sheriffin’?”

  “It’s a different kind of sheriffin’ here,” Loomis explained. “And I make a lot more money sheriffin’ here than I did back in Colorado.”

  “Who pays you? The town?”

  Loomis laughed. “No, the town don’t pay me nothin’. I pay myself.”

  “I see. So the one hundred dollars you are asking for in tax, that’s just to go to you, right?”

  “You understand, I’m sure. If I’m going to pay myself to protect the town, then I have to charge a tax. I don’t think a hundred dollars is askin’ too much.”

  “What if I say I ain’t goin’ to pay it?” Payson asked.

  “Then you aren’t eligible for the protection of the town, so I’ll ask you to just move on.”

  “What if I say I ain’t goin’ to pay it and I don’t plan to move on?”

  “If you’ve heard of me, then you know that I can back up what I say,” Loomis said.

  Unnoticed by Loomis, Payson had snaked his shotgun from the saddle holster. He now held the gun behind the horse to shield it from Loomis’s view.

  “Are you sayin’ we ain’t never goin’ to be able to work this out?” Payson asked.

  “Not unless you pay the one-hundred-dollar tax,” Loomis said. He pushed his coat flap back, exposing his pistol. “Either pay, or git,” he said menacingly. “You ain’t got no other choice.”

  “No, I reckon there is another choice,” Payson said. In a quick, smooth action, Payson raised the shotgun up, laid the barrel across the saddle, and pulled the trigger.

  The gun roared and the horse reared. Loomis was so surprised by the sudden move that he never even touched his own pistol. The impact of a load of double-aught buckshot caught Loomis full in the chest and knocked him back through the batwing doors, taking one of them off the hinges. He wound up lying on the floor with his chest opened up so that his insides could be seen.

  “Son of a bitch!” someone shouted from inside.

  Payson stepped into the saloon right behind Loomis’s body. He was carrying the shotgun with him, and a little curl of smoke was still streaming up from the end of the barrel.

  “Anybody else want to talk about me payin’ taxes?” Payson asked.

  Nobody answered. In fact, nobody even looked at him.

  “Yeah, I thought this might be the end of it,” Payson said. He set the butt of the shotgun on the bar with the barrel pointed up. “Bartender, what do you have to drink in this place?”

  “Beer and whiskey,” the bartender answered.

  “I’ll have it.”

  “You’ll have what, sir?”

  “Beer and whiskey,” Payson said.

  “And we’ll have the same,” one of the five men who came in with him announced.

  “Very good,” the bartender said.

  A moment later, the bartender returned with six empty whiskey glasses and a bottle of whiskey. He also had six mugs of beer.

  “That’ll be six dollars and fifty cents,” the bartender said.

  “Six fifty?” Payson gasped in amazement. “Six fifty for what?”

  “Five dollars for the bottle of whiskey, and a quarter apiece for the be
er.”

  “That’s outlandish to charge so much,” Payson complained. “I can get beer for a nickel anywhere else in the country. Why should I pay you so much for it?”

  “Because you ain’t anywhere else in the country,” the bartender replied. “You’re here. And here, beer is twenty-five cents.”

  Grumbling, Payson pulled enough money from his pocket to pay for the beer and the whiskey.

  Payson tossed the whiskey down, then chased it with almost half the beer. He sat the beer glass down as well, and looked toward the body of the man he had just killed.

  “What happens to him now? Does he just stay there and rot?”

  “No,” the bartender replied. “We learned just real quick that in a town like Gehenna we was goin’ to need an undertaker. So we went out and hired us one.”

  “What about whores?” Clem asked. “You got ’ny whores?”

  “Hell, yes, we got whores,” the bartender said. “What good would a place like this be without whores?”

  “Which one is the best-lookin’?” Clem asked.

  “Hell, nearly ever’ whore in town would make a train take five miles of dirt road,” the bartender replied. “But I reckon Jolene is somewhat better-lookin’ than most.”

  “Where’s she at?”

  The bartender didn’t answer, but he pointed to a table in the back of the room.

  There was someone sitting there, holding a whiskey bottle in one hand and a glass in the other.

  “Jolene,” the bartender called. “You got some business.”

  Jolene filled the glass one more time, then tossed the whiskey down before she walked up to the bar.

  “You wantin’ to ride me, cowboy?” Jolene asked.

  “How much?”

  “Two dollars.”

  “Two dollars? Damn, ain’t that a little high?” Clem asked.

  Jolene turned to go back to her seat at the back of the room.

  “No, wait,” Clem called. “I got two dollars.”

  “In that case, I got me a room upstairs,” Jolene said, pointing toward the stairs at the back.

  “Wait a minute,” Clem said. He turned to the bartender. “Give me a bottle. If I’m goin’ to have to pay two dollars, I plan to make it a party.”

  The bartender gave Clem a bottle in exchange for a five-dollar bill. Then, clutching the bottle by the neck, Clem followed Jolene up the stairs.

  “Who’s in charge around here?” Payson asked.

  “If you mean do we have a mayor or something like that, we ain’t,” the bartender said.

  “But somebody is in charge. Somebody always has to be in charge,” Payson said.

  “There was somebody in charge,” the bartender replied. “But you just kilt him.”

  “Really,” Payson said with a big smile. “Well, I reckon that sort of makes me the headman around here then, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” the bartender said. “That is, until . . .”

  “Until what?”

  “Until the Gravedigger comes back.”

  “The Gravedigger? You mean Angus Boone? Boone is here?”

  “Not all the time,” the bartender replied. “But when he is here, he is in charge. Unless you want to challenge him.”

  “No, that’s all right,” Payson said. “The Gravedigger can be in charge while he’s here, and I’ll be in charge while I’m here.”

  “What if you are both here at the same time?”

  “We won’t be,” Payson said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Durango, Colorado

  Two young men passing through the town stopped in front of the Sundown Saloon. Swinging down from their horses, they patted their dusters down.

  “Donnie, you’re as full of shit as a Christmas goose,” one of them said. “There ain’t nobody that lives on the moon.”

  “How do you know?” Donnie asked. “There ain’t nobody ever gone up there to see that there ain’t folks up there.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s my point. There ain’t nobody up there ’cause there ain’t no way to get there.”

  “How did we get here?” Donnie asked.

  “What?”

  “How did we get here?”

  “What do you mean, how did we get here? We’ve always been here.”

  “Well, they’ve always been there.”

  “No, they ain’t.”

  “You know your problem, Bobby Joe? Your problem is, you ain’t got no imagination.”

  “Yeah, well, right now I can imagine what a cool beer tastes like. And if we wasn’t standin’ out here in the road arguin’ over whether or not there’s people on the moon—which, if you ask me, is about the dumbest thing you can argue about—we’d be drinkin’ a beer by now.”

  “You got that right,” Donnie said, laughing. “It don’t make no sense to be standin’ out here jawin’ when we could be inside drinkin’.”

  The two young men went into the saloon, then stepped up to the bar. The saloon was relatively quiet, with only four men at one table, and a fifth standing down at the far end of the bar. The four at the table were playing cards; the one at the end of the bar was nursing a drink. The man nursing the drink was dressed in black. A turquoise and silver band around his short-crowned black hat provided the only bit of color.

  “What’ll it be, gents?” the bartender asked.

  “I want the coldest beer you’ve got,” Donnie said.

  “Every beer I have is the coldest one I have,” the bartender replied.

  Bobby Joe chuckled. “I’ll have the same,” he said.

  “ Two beers it is,” the bartender replied. He turned to draw the beers.

  “What brings you boys to Durango?” the bartender asked.

  “Nothin’ in particular,” Donnie said. “We’re just passin’ through.”

  “We’re up from Texas,” Bobbie Joe said proudly.

  The bartender put the beers in front of the two boys and they each picked up one.

  “Yes, sir, the great state of Texas,” Donnie added.

  “Well, welcome to Colorado,” the bartender said.

  “Nothin’ good ever come out of Texas,” the man at the end of the bar said.

  Using the back of his hand, Donnie wiped beer foam from his mouth. It was obvious that he had been irritated, and for the briefest of moments, that irritation reflected in his face. But he put it aside, then forced a smile.

  “Hell, mister, Texas is a big state. You can’t say you don’t like Texas unless you’ve seen all of it. And I know you ain’t seen all of it, ’cause no one has seen all of it.”

  “Is that how you get around people tellin’ you they don’t like your state?” the man in black asked.

  Bobby Joe had not been a part of the conversation, but he was listening to it, and now he joined in.

  “What the hell, mister? You trying to pick a fight or something?”

  “Why?” the man in black asked. “If I was tryin’ to pick a fight, would you be obligin’ me?”

  The way the man in black responded angered Bobby Joe even more.

  “Hell, yes, I’d be willin’ to oblige you,” Bobby Joe said angrily. “Nobody up in these parts knows me, but if they did know me, they’d be quick to tell you that Bobby Joe Brubaker ain’t a man you want to get on the wrong side of.”

  “You don’t say,” the man in black responded. Although Bobby Joe was getting angrier and angrier, and his voice getting louder and louder, the voice of the man in black was never more than a sibilant sneer.

  Donnie recognized the growing danger before Bobby Joe did, and he reached out his hand to try and ease the situation.

  “Easy, Bobby Joe. I’m sure he doesn’t mean anything personal by that remark. Not everybody likes Texas, nor are they expected to.”

  “I just don’t like being insulted by some son of bitch who doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Bobby Joe said.

  “Let’s just have our beers and get on our way,” Donnie suggested.

  “Afte
r you apologize,” the man in black said.

  “Apologize? You expect me to apologize?” Bobby Joe said, so angry that his face was turning red. “Apologize my ass. What I’m going to do, mister, is wipe up the floor with your sorry ass!” Bobby Joe put up his fists.

  The man in black smiled, a smile without mirth. “If we’re going to fight, why don’t we make it permanent?” he asked. He stepped away from the bar and flipped his jacket back, exposing a pistol that he wore low and kicked out, in the way of a gunfighter.

  “Mr. Boone, I’m sure these boys would apologize to you if you would just give them a moment to reconsider,” the bartender said. “There’s no need to carry this any further.”

  “My God, Bobby Joe, back off!” Donnie said. “Don’t you know who this is? This is the man they call the Gravedigger!”

  Bobbie Joe realized now that things were beginning to go much further than he had intended, and he opened his fists and held his hands palm out in front of him.

  “No, wait a minute!” he said. “We don’t need to be doin’ this. This is just a little dispute, it ain’t worth either one of us dying over.”

  “Oh, it won’t be either of us, sonny. It’ll just be you,” Boone said. “Both of you,” he added, looking at Donnie, “for when the shootin’ starts, I’m goin’ to kill both of you.”

  “Uh-uh,” Donnie said, shaking his head. “Neither Bobby Joe nor I have any intention of drawing on you. So if you shoot us, you are going to have to shoot us in cold blood in front of these witnesses.”

  “Oh, it ain’t goin’ to be in cold blood,” Boone said. “You’ll be drawin’ on me. Both of you.”

  Donnie’s knees grew so weak that he could barely stand, and he felt nauseous.

  “Please, Mr. Boone, we don’t want any trouble,” Donnie said. “Why don’t you just let us apologize and we’ll go on our way?”

  Boone shook his head. “I give you boys the chance to apologize. You didn’t take it. It’s too late now. Pull your guns.”

  Donnie and Bobby Jo looked at each other, then, with a scream from Donnie, they made ragged, desperate grabs for their pistols. They were slow, so slow that Boone had the luxury of waiting for just a moment to see which of the two offered him the most competition. Deciding it was Donnie, Boone pulled his pistol and shot Donnie first.