Return of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  He rode on, always checking his backtrail. He had a vague uneasy feeling that he was still being followed. But he could never spot his follower. And that was cause for alarm, for Buck, even though still a young man, was an expert in surviving in the wilderness.

  He skirted south of the still-unnamed village of Idaho Falls, a place one man claimed “openly wore the worst side out.”

  Buck rode slowly but steadily, coming up on the south side of the Big Lost, north of the Craters of the Moon. He stopped at a trading post at what would someday become a resort town called Arco. Inside the dark, dirty place, filled with skins and the smell of rotgut whiskey, Buck bought bacon and beans and coffee from a scar-faced clerk. The clerk smelled as bad as his store.

  Buck’s eyes flicked over several wanted posters tacked to the wall. There he was.

  “Last one of them I seen had ten thousand dollars reward on it,” he said, to no one in particular. He noticed several men at a corner table ceased their card playing.

  “Ante’s been upped,” the clerk/bartender said with a grunt.

  “Man could do a lot with thirty thousand dollars,” Buck said. He walked to the bar and ordered whiskey. He didn’t really care for the stuff but he wanted information, and bartenders seldom talked to a non-drinking loafer. “The good stuff,” he told the bartender. The man replaced one bottle and reached under the counter for another bottle.

  He grinned, exposing blackened stubs of teeth. “This one ain’t got no snake heads in it.”

  Buck lifted the glass. Smelled like bear piss. Keeping his expression noncommittal, he sipped the whiskey. Tasted even worse.

  “Have any trouble coming from the east?” the bartender asked.

  “How’d you know I come from the east?”

  “That’s the way you rode in.”

  “Seen some Blackfeet two-three days ago. But they didn’t see me. I didn’t hang around long.”

  “Smart.”

  “You see four men, riding together?” the voice came from behind Buck, from the card table.

  “Yeah. And so did the Blackfeet.”

  “Crap! You reckon the Injuns got ’em?”

  “I reckon so. I didn’t hang around to see.”

  “You mean you jist rode off without lendin’ a hand?”

  “One more wouldn’t have made any difference,” Buck said quietly, knowing what was coming.

  “Then I reckon that makes you a coward, don’t it?” the cardplayer said, standing up.

  Buck slowly placed the shot glass of bear piss back on the rough bar. He eyeballed the man. Two guns worn low and tied down. The leather hammer thongs off. “Either that or careful.”

  “You know what I think, Slick? I think it makes you yellow.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I think,” Buck said. “I think you don’t know your bunghole from your mouth.”

  The man flushed in the dim light of the trading post. His dirty hands hovered over his guns. “I think I’ll jist kill you for that.”

  “Bet or fold,” Buck said.

  The man’s hands dipped down. Buck’s right-hand .44 roared. The gunhand was dead before he hit the floor, the slug taking him in the center of the chest, exploding his heart.

  “I never even seen the draw,” the bartender said, his voice hushed and awe-filled.

  “Any of you other boys want to ante up in this game?” Buck asked.

  None did.

  The dead man broke wind as escaping gas left his cooling body.

  “He were my partner,” a man still seated at the table said. “But he were in the wrong this time. I lay claim to his pockets.”

  “Suits me,” Buck said. No one had even seen him holster his .44. “He have a name?”

  “Big Jack. From up Montana way. Never spoke no last name. Who you be?”

  “Buck West. I been trackin’ that damned Smoke Jensen for the better part of six months.”

  Big Jack’s partner visibly relaxed. “Us, too. I would ask if you wanted some company, but you look like you ride alone.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Name’s Jerry. This here’s Carl and Paul. Don’t reckon you’d give us a hand diggin’ the hole for Jack?”

  “I don’t reckon so.”

  “Cain’t much blame you.”

  “Bury him out back,” the bartender said. “Deep. If he smells any worser dead than alive I’ll have to move my place of business.”

  3

  The men watched as Buck rode away, ramrod straight in the saddle. Jerry said, “That young feller is faster than greased lightning.”

  “Faster than Jesse, I betcha!”

  “Ain’t no faster than Wild Bill, though,” Paul said.

  Jerry spat on the ground. “Wild Bill ain’t crap!”

  “You don’t say!” Carl turned on his friend. “I suppose you gonna tell us Wild Bill didn’t clean up Abilene?”

  “He sure as hell didn’t. I know. I were there. Me and Phil Coe. I seen Wild Bill shoot him with a pair of derringers after Phil done put his gun away. Then he turned around and shot the marshal, Mike Williams. Wild Bill better not ever try to brace that there Buck West. Buck’s a bad one, boys. Cold-eyed as a snake.”

  It would be almost exactly two and one half years later, on the afternoon of August 2, 1876, in Deadwood, South Dakota, when a cross-eyed, busted-nose wino named Jack McCall would blow out Hickok’s brains as he studied his poker hand of Aces and Eights. Wild Bill would be thirty-nine years old.

  “I think Potter ought to know about this here Buck West,” Jerry said. “Think I’ll take me a ride later on. Let Buck get good and gone.”

  “We’ll tag along.”

  Late that afternoon a stranger rode up to the trading post and walked inside. He cradled a Henry repeating rifle in the crook of his left arm. “I seen the fresh grave out back,” he said to the barkeep. “Friend of yourn?”

  “Hell, no! Don’t git me to lyin’.”

  “Man ought to have a marker on his grave, don’t you think?”

  “I’ll git around to it one of these days. Maybe. Big Jack was all they called him.”

  “Better than nothin’. I don’t reckon he died of natural causes?”

  “Not likely. You gonna talk all day or buy a drink of whiskey?”

  The buckskin-dressed old man tossed some change on the wide rough board that passed for a counter. “That buy a jug?”

  “And then some. No, sir. That Big Jack fancied hisself a gunhand, I guess.” He placed a dirty cup and a clay jug of rotgut on the counter. “But he done run up on a ringtailed-tooter this day. Feller by the name of Buck West. You heard of him?”

  “Seems I have, somewheres. Bounty hunter, I think. But he’s a bad man to mess with.”

  “Tell me! Why, he drew so fast a feller couldn’t even see the blur! Big Jack’s hand could just touch the butt of his .36 when the lead hit him in the center of the chest. Dead ’fore he hit the ground.”

  The old man smiled. “That fast, hey?”

  “Lord have mercy, yes!” He eyeballed the old man. “Ain’t I seen you afore? You a mountain man, ain’t you? Ain’t so many of you old boys left.”

  “Not me, podner. I’m retared from the east. Come out here to pass my golden years amid the peace and tranquility of the High Lonesome.”

  The bartender, no spring chicken himself, narrowed his eyes and said, “And you jist as full of shit now as you was forty year ago, you old goat!”

  The old man laughed. “Wal, you jist keep that information inside that head of yourn and off your tongue. You do that and I won’t tell nobody I know where Rowdy Jake Kelly was retared to. You still got money on your head, Rowdy.”

  “Man, I heard you got kilt! Shot all to hell and gone over to Needle Mountains.”

  “Part of it’s true. I got all dressed up in my finest buckskins, rode an old nag up into the hills, and laid me down to die. Lordy, but I was hurtin’ some. Longer I laid there the madder I got. I finally got up, said to hell with this, and rode o
ff. Found me one of my Injun kids—or grandkids, I ain’t real sure which—and she took care of me. You keep hush about this, now, you hear?”

  “I never saw you afore this day,” Rowdy Jake Kelly said.

  The old man nodded, picked up his jug of whiskey, and rode off.

  Buck had left the trading post and followed the Big Lost River north. He pushed his horses, rested them, then pushed them hard again, putting as many miles as possible between himself and the trading post. He had a hunch the men back at the trading post would be hell-bent for Bury. They were bounty hunters; he knew from the look. He smiled grimly at what they might think if they knew they had been within touching distance of the man called Smoke.

  Buck found himself a hidden vantage point where he could watch the trail, and settled in for the evening. He built a hand-sized fire and fixed bacon and beans and coffee. Using tinderdry wood, the fire was virtually smokeless. He kept his coffee warm over the coals.

  Just at dusk, he heard the sounds of riders. Three riders. He watched as they passed his hiding place at a slow canter, heading north, toward the trading post at Mackay. He watched and listened until the sounds of steel-shod hooves faded into the settling dusk. Using his saddle for a pillow, Buck went to sleep.

  Just as the first rays of dawn streaked the horizon, Buck was fording the Big Lost, heading for the eastern banks and the Lost River Range. He did not want to travel those flats that stretched for miles before reaching Challis, preferring to remain in the timber.

  He wanted to take his time getting to Bury for two reasons: One, he wanted the story of the shoot-out at the trading post to reach the right ears—namely, Potter, Stratton, and Richards. Men like that could always use another gun, and Buck intended to be that other gun. Two, he still had that nagging sensation of being followed. And it annoyed him. He knew, felt, someone was back there. He just didn’t know who.

  The eighty-mile ride from the trading post to Challis passed slowly, and Buck took his time, enjoying the sights of new country. Buck was a man who loved the wilderness, loved its great beauty, loved the feeling of being alone, although he knew perfectly well he certainly was not alone. There were the eagles and hawks who soared and glided above him. The playful camp-robber birds, the squirrels and bears and puma, the breathless beauty of wild flowers in early summer. No, he was not alone in the wilderness. Alone was just a state of mind. Buck had only to look around him for company, compliments of nature.

  Sensing more than hearing movement, Buck cut toward the west and into the deep timber of the Lost River Range. He quieted his horses and waited in the timber. Then he spotted them. It was a war party, and a big one. From this distance—he couldn’t risk using his spyglass, for it was afternoon and he was facing west, and didn’t want to risk sunlight bouncing off the lens—he could only guess the tribe. Nez Percé, Bannock—maybe Sheepeater. Preacher had told him about the little known but highly feared Sheepeaters.

  Buck counted the braves. Thirty of them, all painted up and looking for trouble. He cursed under his breath as they reined up and dismounted, after sending lookouts in all directions.

  Were they going to make camp? Buck didn’t know. But he knew it was awfully early for that.

  To the south, Borah Peak, almost thirteen thousand feet high, loomed up stark in the high lonesome. The highest peak in the state, Borah dominated matters for miles.

  Buck sat it out for several hours, watching and waiting out the long minutes. The horses seemed to sense the urgency of the moment and were very quiet. Occasionally, Buck would slip back to them to pat and water them, whispering gently to the animals, keeping them still and calm.

  Returning from his last trip to the animals, Buck looked out over the valley he was high above. He grunted, not in surprise, but rather an “I should have known” grunt.

  The Indians were gone, having left as swiftly and silently as they had come. Buck lay still for another ten minutes, mulling the situation over in his mind.

  The war party had built no fires, either cook or signal. They had met with no other Indians. Why had they stopped? Buck had no idea. But he knew one thing: he damn sure wasn’t going to head out after them. Whichever direction the war party had taken, he planned to head in the other direction. And he did. Before two minutes had passed, Buck had tightened cinches and was heading out. He found where the war party had ridden south, so he swung Drifter’s head and pointed his nose north, toward the muddy, brawling town of Challis, located just to the northwest of the Salmon River. Buck would hang around Challis for a few days, listening to the miners talk and attempting to get the feel of what the townspeople thought of Bury, some thirty-five miles north and slightly east.

  Challis was one short business street, more saloons than anything else, with tents and shacks and a few permanent-looking homes to the north. Most of the shacks appeared to have been tossed in their location by some giant crap-shooter.

  Buck stabled his horses—he wasn’t worried about anyone stealing Drifter, for the stallion would kill anyone who entered his stall—and taking his Henry repeating rifle, a change of clothing, and his saddlebags, Buck walked toward the town’s hotel.

  After checking in, Buck went to a barber shop and took a hot bath, a young Chinese man keeping the water hot with additional buckets of water. After Buck had soaped off the weeks of dirt and fleas, he dressed in dark trousers, white shirt, and vest. He left his boots to be shined and settled in the barber chair.

  “Short,” he told the barber. “And trim my beard.”

  “Passin’ through?” the barber asked.

  “Could be. Mostly just drifting.”

  The barber had noted Buck’s tied-down guns. Being an observant man, and one raised on the frontier, he knew a fast gun when he saw one. And this man sitting in his chair was a gunhand, and no tinhorn. The butts of his .44s were worn smooth from handling, with no marks in the wood to signify kills. Only a tinhorn did that, and tinhorns didn’t last long in the west.

  But there was something else about this young man. Confidence. That was it. And a cold air about him. Not unfriendly, just cold.

  “If it’s silver you’re huntin’”—he knew it wasn’t—“big strike north and east of here. Close to the Lemhi River.”

  “Not for me,” Buck told him. “Too much work involved in that.”

  “Uh-huh. You be handy with them .44s?”

  “Some folks say that.”

  “You head north from here, follow the Salmon until the river cuts through the Lemhi range, then head east. You’ll come up on the town of Bury.”

  “Hell of a name for a town.”

  “It’s right proper, considerin’ the size of their boot hill. You’ll see.”

  “Why would I want to go to someplace called Bury?”

  “Maybe you don’t. Then again, you might find work up there.”

  “Might do that. How’s the law in this town?” Buck set the stage with that question.

  “Tough when they have to be. Long as it’s a fair fight, they won’t bother you.”

  “I never shot no one in the back,” Buck replied, putting it just a bit testily.

  “You don’t have that look about you, that’s for sure.” The barber’s voice was very bland.

  “Where’s the best place to eat?”

  “Marie’s. Just up the street. Beef and beans and apple pie. Good portions, too. Reasonable.”

  They weren’t just good portions; they were huge. The food simple but well-prepared. The apple pie was delicious. Buck pushed the empty plate away and settled back, leaning back in his chair, his back to a wall. He lingered over a third cup of coffee and watched the activity in the street through the window.

  He was waiting for the marshal or sheriff to make his appearance. It didn’t take long.

  The town marshal entered the cafe, a deputy behind him. The deputy held a sawed-off double-barrel twelve-gauge express gun in his hands. And it appeared he had used it before.

  The marshal was not a man to back up or
mince words. He sat down at Buck’s table, facing him, and ordered a cup of coffee. He stared at Buck.

  Buck returned the stare.

  “Passin’ through?” the marshal asked.

  “Might stay two or three days. I’m in no big hurry to get anywhere.”

  “You got a name?”

  Buck smiled. “I’m not wanted.”

  “That don’t answer my question.”

  “Buck West.” Buck then placed the man. Dooley. He’d been a lawman over in Colorado for years. A straight, no-nonsense lawman. But a fair one.

  Dooley pointed up the street. “Them houses with paint on them beginning at the end of the street is off-boundaries for drifters. Decent folks live there. The dosshouses is on the other end of the street.” He pointed. “Thataway.” He jerked his thumb. “The road out of town is thataway. Feel free to take it as soon as possible.”

  “I don’t intend to cause you or your men any trouble, Marshal,” Buck said softly.

  “But you will,” the marshal replied just as softly. “You just got that air about you.”

  “You’re a very suspicious man, Marshal.”

  “Goes with the job, son.” The marshal drained his coffee cup, stood up, and started to leave. He looked once more at Buck. “You sure look familiar, mister.”

  “I just have a friendly face,” Buck said solemnly.

  “Yeah,” the marshal said drily. “I’m sure that’s it.”

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