TWENTY-FOUR
Sally sat on a wide settee in Dr. Spalding’s parlor holding Mary Carson’s hand. Mary was quietly sobbing into a lace handkerchief. Across the room, Pearlie and Cal sat in high-armed easy chairs, both of them acutely uncomfortable in the presence of a crying woman.
Finally, after what seemed like years but was only a couple of hours, Cotton Spalding emerged from his inner treatment room drying his hands on a towel. He looked dog-tired, with red, bloodshot eyes and dark circles under the eyes. He’d been continually by Monte’s side during the long night, and it showed.
Mary looked up quickly, an unspoken question in her eyes. Cotton smiled at her and moved to take her hand. “He’s going to be just fine, Mary. He’s awake now and I can find no evidence of any brain damage or other infirmity, other than a complete amnesia about the events of the last couple of days, which isn’t unusual in these cases.”
“Oh, thank God!” Mary breathed, looking skyward.
Sally Jensen looked over at the boys, her eyes brimming with tears of thankfulness, while both Cal and Pearlie grinned from ear to ear.
“Now, he’s going to have to remain quiet for a week or two, and I’m going to want you to feed him plenty of beef stew and soup with cream in it to get his strength back,” Cotton said, his manner becoming more professional.
“Don’t you worry, Doc Spalding,” Mary said, nodding her head as she spoke. “I’ll make sure that ornery galoot does exactly what you tell him to.”
“It isn’t going to be easy, Mary,” Cotton said. “He’s already chomping at the bit to get back to work. He asked me who was going to take care of his town if he lay around on his butt all day.”
They all laughed at that. It was just like Monte Carson to put the welfare of the townspeople ahead of his own well-being. It was one reason why he’d never had any serious opposition for reelection as sheriff since Smoke had recommended him for the job when the town was first formed.
After the doctor went into another room to see to another patient, Mary turned to Sally. “Thank you for staying here by my side until he woke up, Sally, but now it’s time for you to go see about your man.”
“Will you be all right?” Sally asked as she got to her feet, anxious to get back on the trail and go after the men who’d taken her Smoke.
“Of course I will, now that I know Monte is doing all right,” Mary said. “Now you and the boys go on and bring Smoke back here safe and sound.”
Sally leaned down and gave Mary a hug. “You tell Monte we’ll be thinking of him and to get well soon,” she said, and then she led the boys out the front door.
“You want us to go get Louis to ride with us, Miss Sally?” Pearlie asked.
She looked up at him. “Of course, Pearlie. Louis would never forgive us if we left him out of this fracas,” she answered.
An hour later, they’d picked up their horses at the livery and the four of them were on the trail toward Pueblo, hoping against hope that they were going to be in time to find Smoke alive.
“Hey, men, over here!” Wally Stevens yelled through his cupped hands.
As Cletus and Sarah and the other men rode slowly up to him, they found him standing over the snow-covered dead body of Charlie Blake. Blake was lying on his back with a gaping hole in his throat and frozen blood all around him. Luckily, they’d gotten to him before the scavengers did.
The storm was winding down, and there was even the hint of sunlight peeking through the clouds as the snow disappeared and the wind began to die down. They’d spent an uncomfortable night before the dawn came and they could resume the search for Charlie’s body.
Cletus felt a raw knot of anger in his gut. Damn Angus MacDougal and damn Smoke Jensen for this. A good man lay dead whose only fault was trying to help out a friend.
Sarah brushed away tears from her eyes. She didn’t want the men to see her crying or to guess the reason. If she hadn’t helped Smoke Jensen escape last night, Charlie Blake would still be alive.
Of course, she was intelligent enough to know that Jensen would by now be dead at the hands of her father, but that was only one life. She had a feeling that Jensen was going to cause a lot more deaths before this little trip was over. She wondered what her father would think about that and whether he would consider Johnny’s death was worth the deaths of so many other good men.
She grimaced. Of course he would. In Angus’s mind, there was no one who was nearly as important as a member of the MacDougal clan. No, she thought with disgust, he wouldn’t worry one bit if it cost ten men their lives as long as he got a chance to avenge Johnny’s death.
“Pick him up and put him across one of the packhorses,” Cletus said.
“And be quick about it!” Billy Free growled, pulling out his six-gun and checking the loads. “That bastard Jensen has to be made to pay for this!”
Sarah looked over at the young man, whose face was flushed and red in the morning light.
“He was only defending himself, Billy,” she said in an even tone, glancing from Billy’s face to the mountain slopes a couple of miles off in the distance where Jensen had disappeared.
“How can you take his side?” the boy almost screamed. “Charlie Blake was a friend of mine!”
“Charlie was my friend too, Billy,” Sarah answered. “And Johnny was my brother and I’ve got to tell all of you, I’m beginning to wonder if he was worth all this.”
The men began to look around at each other, wondering what the hell Sarah was talking about.
“I’m sure Sarah means that she hates to see anyone else get killed because of her taking Jensen prisoner, isn’t that right, Sarah?” Cletus said, trying to change her meaning to one the men could understand.
Sarah lowered her head and quickly blinked away the tears in her eyes. “Yes, of course that’s what I mean,” she said in a firm voice. “I have no sympathy for murderers and gunmen, but I also don’t want to put the rest of your lives at risk to avenge the death of one of my family members.”
“Don’t you worry none, Miss Sarah,” Bob Bartlett called. He and Juan Gomez and Billy Free had joined up with the group right after Smoke had ridden off into the storm. “We ain’t gonna let no gunslick get away with killin’ our friends and neighbors. We ain’t gonna stop until we’ve dragged him outta those mountains feet-first—right, boys?” he yelled, raising his rifle into the air.
The crowd all hollered their assent, and a couple even shot off their weapons into the air.
Lord help us, Cletus thought, looking around at the men as they yelled and hollered. We’ve gone from a posse to a lynch mob and all it took was one death. I wonder what we’ll become after several more of us are killed. Will we still be human, and will we ever be able to forget what’s about to happen here in the mountains in the next few days?
“Come on, Clete!” Jason Biggs yelled. “Let’s go get that bastard!”
Cletus held up his hands for silence, trying to quiet the mob the men had become. “Listen up, men,” he said, keeping his voice level and emotionless. “Take a look at Charlie’s body lyin’ across that packhorse,” he said, inclining his head toward the mount. “You’ll notice he ain’t wearin’ no guns, and if I’m not mistaken, he probably had a long gun or two in his saddle boots on his horse.”
“Yeah, so what?” Biggs asked sarcastically. “That just means that son of a bitch Jensen stole ‘em.”
“What it means,” Cletus tried to explain, “is if we go charging up into those mountains, Jensen is gonna pick us off like flies. He’s an experienced mountain man who knows what he’s doing, and now that we know he’s armed with a long gun and a couple of six-killers, we have to be smarter and more careful than we’ve ever been before or most of us ain’t gonna be coming home.”
“You sound like you’re plumb scared to death of that son of a bitch, Clete,” Sam Jackson said, disgust in his voice.
“Respecting the abilities of your enemies ain’t being scared, Sam,” Cletus answered, not rising to the bait
in Jackson’s tone, “it’s being smart. You want to go hightailing it up into those woods, yelling and screaming and not paying caution no mind, you go right ahead. I’ll do my best to find your dead carcass and get it back to your wife so she and your kids can plant you proper.”
Cletus’s words sobered the men and quieted them down a bit so they weren’t so boisterous. “Now, I’m still the leader of this group, an’ anybody don’t think so is welcome to mosey on along by themselves, but whoever stays is gonna do what I say or I’ll put a bullet in their head myself. You all got my drift?” he asked.
There were mumbles of assent, but no one left and no one disputed his right of leadership. “Now, here’s what we’re gonna do,” he said, motioning the men to draw closer so they could hear his plans.
“First off, we’re gonna pair up. No one rides alone or gets out of sight of his partner. Secondly, we’re gonna ride with our weapons in our hands, loaded up six and six and the hammer cocked at all times. We’re not going to give Jensen a chance to take any more of us out without a fight.”
As the men nodded their agreement, he went on with his attack strategy. “Now that the storm has quit, he won’t be able to move around the mountain without leaving tracks, so we’ve got to be careful not to get crosswise with one another and spoil his trail. We’re gonna spread out, each pair staying in eye contact with another pair, and we’re gonna criss-cross those woods until we pick up his trail, and then we’re gonna dog him until we catch him.”
“And then we’re gonna blow his damn head off!” Billy Free shouted.
Cletus silenced him with a glare. “No, and then we’re going to try and capture him, if we can do it without losing any more men,” Cletus said. “Angus MacDougal is still paying for this trip and he wants Jensen alive, if at all possible. So, if we can, we’re going to try and take him back to the ranch in one piece.”
“What if he don’t agree to that proposition, Boss?” George Jones asked.
Cletus smiled grimly. “Then we’ll blow his ass to hell and back!”
When the men all laughed at this, Cletus said, “Now, let’s make a quick camp and get some hot coffee and some good grub into our bellies. It’s gonna get awful cold tonight, and I don’t want to give our position away by making any campfires. We’ll eat a hot meal now, and tonight we’ll try and have a cold camp.”
“And I want to add another hundred dollars to the man who gets the drop on Jensen so we can capture him,” Sarah said.
“What does a man get who puts lead in the son of a bitch?” Billy Free asked sarcastically.
Sarah stared at him. “I’ll let my daddy deal with that man,” she said, “but I don’t think he’ll appreciate what my daddy does.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Smoke had a problem. The storm had stopped and the day was clearing off, clouds disappearing as fast as they’d appeared days before. He knew that with no storm to cover his tracks, the deep snow would lead the gang that had taken him prisoner right to him. Also, his dark clothes were going to stand out against the white snow like a road sign. He was going to have to be very careful moving around to make sure he stayed under cover.
The good news was that he was a good mile and a half up the lower slope of the mountain he’d been heading for. Now the gang was going to have to come after him in his territory, where he was right at home and where they were interlopers.
As he rode, he checked his weapons. He had two pistols, each with six cartridges, and a rather old and beaten-up Winchester that looked as if its owner hadn’t cleaned it in years. He shook his head, knowing he wouldn’t be able to trust it for accuracy at much over a hundred yards.
He leaned forward, took the canteen off the saddle horn, and pulled its cork, taking a sniff of the contents. He wrinkled his nose. The man he’d killed had had his canteen filled with whiskey instead of water or coffee. That’s no good, he thought. His experience had taught him that men who drank whiskey when the weather was below freezing didn’t last too long. Instead of warming a body up, as many flatlanders thought, whiskey actually lowered the body’s resistance to freezing temperatures.
He guided the horse into the middle of a small copse of trees, so he’d be out of sight from the slopes below, and dismounted. He opened the saddlebags to see what else he’d inherited with the dead man’s horse.
Good news at last. The man had a large chunk of bacon wrapped in waxed paper in a sack along with several biscuits and a couple of pieces of jerky. There was also a small can of Arbuckle’s coffee, but no pot or skillet to use to cook either the bacon or the coffee in.
No matter, he thought. A good mountain man can always improvise.
In the other saddlebag was an old monocular scope, the kind you pulled out and looked through with one eye. It wasn’t as good as a decent pair of binoculars, but it would do. Nestled in the bag was a box of .44 cartridges for the rifle and for the pistols as well. That was an additional fifty rounds he had to add to what was already in the weapons.
In addition to the shells, there was a folded-up yellow rain cape and a small woven blanket and a box of lucifers. Along with the waterproof ground blanket folded behind the saddle, he would at least have some protection against the cold when night fell.
He nodded, grinning. All in all, not too bad, he thought. He had managed to escape and to acquire not only transportation, but also weapons and food and some shelter against the elements. He was ready now to go to war.
He took the telescope and moved to the edge of the copse of trees. He panned the scope all around the downslope area that he could see. There was no sign of any pursuit just yet, which meant he probably had enough time to fix a fire and to eat and make some coffee.
He took the reins of the horse and led it around and through the trees until he found some boulders sitting so there was a small protected space out of the chilly wind on the mountainside.
Using his boot, he scraped the snow down to where the horse could forage enough grass to fill its belly. Unfortunately, the man hadn’t carried any grain for his mount, but a few days on grass wouldn’t hurt the horse.
He took the saddle and blanket off, and used the reins to fashion a makeshift hobble for the animal, since he didn’t know if he could trust it to remain nearby if only ground-reined.
Once his horse was taken care of, he gathered up an armful of dead tree limbs and deadfall from around the boulders. He made a small pile between the boulders, with the smaller sticks on the bottom and the larger ones on top.
He opened the saddlebags and took out the woven blanket. Since the grass around was all covered with snow, it couldn’t be used to start the fire. It was too wet. So, he unraveled an inch or so of the blanket, wadded up the yarn, and stuck it under the kindling. When he lit it with a lucifer, it was only moments before he had a small fire going.
He’d picked up only long-dead wood, so there was very little smoke, though there was enough to spot if the men below were looking, and he knew he’d have to make this nooning fast.
He took out the bacon, sliced it with the skinning knife he’d taken from the man’s boot, and laid the strips out on a wide, flat rock. This he laid gently in the edge of the fire.
While the bacon was cooking, he poured the contents of the can of Arbuckle’s coffee into the sack the bacon and jerky and biscuits had been in, and then he filled the empty can with snow. He placed it near the fire so the snow would melt.
As the bacon cooked and the water began to boil, Smoke dumped a handful of coffee grounds into the water in the can. Using the skinning knife, he cut one of the biscuits open, and then speared the bacon and put it between the halves of the biscuit and began to eat.
The biscuit was very hard, but it softened a bit as the grease from the bacon soaked into it, and soon he could chew it without worrying about breaking a tooth off.
When the coffee was boiling, he wrapped the blanket around his hands and pulled the can away from the fire. He set it down and waited for it to cool down enough so he co
uld drink it.
“All the comforts of home,” he mumbled to himself, happy to be free at last.
Thirty minutes later, he kicked snow into the fire to put it out and got back in the saddle. He’d dumped the whiskey out of the canteen after taking a sip or two, and replaced it with hot coffee. He’d also saved some of the biscuit and bacon sandwiches for an evening meal, since he doubted he’d be able to make a fire after darkness came.
He spurred the horse into motion and as it walked up the slope, he glanced behind him. Sure enough, the pine tree limbs he’d tied to the horse’s tail were dragging along, smoothing over the prints the horse was making in the snow. It wasn’t perfect, and if the men chasing him had a good tracker along, they could still follow him. But to see and follow the tracks, the tracker would have to walk—they couldn’t be seen from horseback. This would slow their chase considerably, and for every minute they delayed, the high winds of the High Lonesome were making his tracks that much harder to follow.
He moved farther and farther up the slope, wrapping his blanket around his shoulders as the temperature got colder and colder the higher he went. He glanced upward and smiled to see dense, dark clouds again forming around the distant peaks, whipped around and around by the high winds up on top of the mountain. He knew this meant more early winter storms were on the way, along with temperatures many degrees below zero.
“We’ll see how those boys like mountain weather,” he said to the back of the horse’s head as they slowly ascended toward the snow-covered peaks above them.
Several miles away, Cletus got to his feet as his men finished their noon meal. He moved over next to where the horses were tied and found Jason Biggs standing there, a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
“You see anything, Jason?” he asked as he began to build himself a cigarette.
“Couple’a elk an’ a bear, but nothin’ that looked like a rider on horseback.” He hesitated, and then he added, “I did see what looked like a thin plume of smoke, but with the winds up there it was hard to tell.”
Ambush of the Mountain Man Page 17