Ambush of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Bob Bartlett, whose face was red and chapped from the cold, stammered out, “It’s gonna get colder’n a well-digger’s belt buckle tonight, Clete.”

  “Yeah,” Carl Jacoby agreed, looking up at the darkening sky, which was full of dark roiling clouds. “And it looks like more snow’s on the way too.”

  “Exactly,” Cletus agreed. “That’s why we’ve got to find a place we can defend that’s protected from above so we can make a fire and get warm.”

  “I ain’t sittin’ next to no fire an’ makin’ myself an easy target,” Sam Jackson said grimly.

  Cletus shrugged. “Good, Sam. Then when morning comes we’ll throw your frozen carcass on the coals to thaw you out so you can sit a saddle.”

  By the time darkness had fallen, Cletus had managed to find a series of large boulders that were lying in a line across the slope of the hillside. He had his men make a camp on the downhill side where they’d be safe from gunshots from above, and he built a large fire.

  “Clete,” Sarah said when she saw the pile of brush and limbs he’d stacked up. “Jensen will be able to see that fire for miles.”

  He shrugged and grinned. “You think he don’t already know exactly where we are, Missy?”

  “Uh . . . I guess he does at that,” she agreed.

  “Now, I’m gonna build this here fire and get some hot vittles into the men, ‘cause if’n I don’t, they’re gonna freeze to death. But while we’re eating, I’m going to have some sentries out so that Jensen won’t be able to sneak up on us or take any potshots at us.”

  “You think sentries will stop him?” Sarah asked.

  “Probably not, but I think Jensen’s gonna be doing just what we’re doing tonight. Trying to stay outta the storm and get some heat into his body. I don’t care how long he was a mountain man. That don’t keep his blood from freezing just like anybody else’s.”

  When she nodded, he slapped her on the back. “Now, get on over there and help the men get some coffee made and some beans and fatback cooked up so’s we can eat.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Cletus, sir,” she said, snapping off in insolent half salute and grinning as she turned and moved over to the packhorse that carried their supplies.

  They’d just finished eating when a gunshot came from down the hill, followed quickly by a shout, “Yo, the camp!”

  The men sitting around the fire all jumped to their feet, their pistols in their hands and worried looks on their faces as Cletus shouted, “Put those guns away, men. That’s Mac Macklin’s voice.”

  Moments later, Angus MacDougal and the men with him rode slowly into the light of the campfire. Daniel Macklin was riding at MacDougal’s side.

  “Damn, Clete,” Angus said as he dismounted and walked over to stand near the fire with both his hands outstretched in front of him. “That fire feels good. I’m froze clear down to the bone.”

  Clete looked over at Juan Gomez. “Juanito, would you boys cook up some more beans and fatback and put some more coffee on to boil. Looks like we got company for supper.

  “How’d you find us in the dark?” Cletus asked Angus.

  “Hell, boy, you can see this fire for five miles,” Angus answered. He looked around at how Cletus had arranged the fire behind the boulders so his men were protected from above.

  He nodded in approval. “Right smart move, Clete, making your camp here.”

  Cletus smiled and turned to pour himself some coffee from the pot. Guess the old man’s forgotten all the times we camped out surrounded by hostile Indians in the old days, he thought.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  As they sat by the fire next to each other, Angus told Cletus that he was taking over the hunt for Jensen.

  “You’re welcome to it, Angus,” Cletus said, relieved that he wouldn’t be in charge any longer. “I got no more stomach for this anyway.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Angus asked around a mouthful of bacon and beans.

  Cletus drank his coffee, staring over the rim at the fire without looking at Angus. “I just don’t think Jensen is the killer you make him out to be, Angus.”

  Angus swallowed his food. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You mean you don’t believe he killed my Johnny?” he asked.

  Cletus turned to look at him. “No, I know he killed Johnny, Boss. It’s just that I think Johnny probably didn’t give him no choice in the matter, that’s all.”

  “Bullshit!” Angus growled. “He shot my boy down in cold blood.”

  Cletus shook his head. “First off, Angus, Johnny weren’t no boy, he was a full-growed man, though I got to admit he often didn’t act like it.”

  Angus glared at Cletus, hate in his eyes at this desecration of his son’s memory.

  Cletus went on. “Not only that, but on the ride back here, after Sarah betrayed him and took him prisoner, Jensen risked his own life to save hers.”

  Angus opened his eyes wide in disbelief. “What?”

  Cletus told him the story of Smoke and the rattlesnake and how he’d thrown himself in front of Sarah.

  Angus clamped his jaws shut. “That don’t make no never mind. Fact is, he killed Johnny and for that he’s gonna die, no matter what he did for Sarah.”

  From the other side of Angus, Sarah interjected, “Daddy, I think you ought to listen to Clete. He’s right about Jensen. He isn’t a cold-blooded killer like you say.”

  Angus’s face twisted up in hatred and he swung a backhand, slapping Sarah across the face.

  “Don’t you dare say nothing against your brother, girl,” he snarled. “He was worth two of you.”

  As Sarah’s hand went to her face, Cletus reached across Angus and grabbed his wrist, twisting hard until Angus groaned in pain. “That tears it, Angus. I’m through with you and your little gang of killers. And if I ever hear of you laying another hand on Sarah”—Cletus paused and looked over at her—“I’ll personally come out there and beat the living shit out of you!”

  Cletus got to his feet and helped Sarah to hers. He put a palm against the side of her face, his eyes sad. “I’m sorry, Missy.”

  She glanced from Cletus back down to her father. “Me too, Clete. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  The two walked over to the string of horses and began to saddle their mounts.

  “You leave me now, Clete, and you’ll never work in Colorado again!” Angus shouted at their backs.

  As Cletus and Sarah swung up into their saddles, Cletus shook his head at the old man. “I wouldn’t make threats you ain’t gonna be able to carry out, Angus. For my money, I don’t think you got one chance in ten of riding off this mountain alive.”

  “And just where do you think you’re going, young lady?” Angus growled at Sarah.

  She sat up straight in her saddle. “I’m going home to pack my things. It’s about time I left home and made my own way in the world.”

  “Well,” Angus snorted, “good riddance to the both of you. You’ll both come crawling back to me when you realize I’m right about all this.”

  Cletus shook his head. “No, Angus, we won’t be back. And I don’t think you’ve been right about anything for a very long time.”

  They jerked their reins and rode off alongside one another without looking back, leaving Angus staring after them as the darkness swallowed them up.

  Smoke heard this exchange from where he stood in the darkness less than a dozen yards away. It had been no trouble for him to sneak near the camp, moving between the sentries as silent as a ghost in the pitch-black night. He could have snuck up to any of them and killed them before they knew what was happening, but he wanted to end this with as little loss of life as he could. There’d already been too much killing.

  The knee-deep snow helped to cover any sounds he might make, but would show his tracks later in the morning light. He smiled to himself, unworried about that. He planned to give the men in the gang plenty of other things to be thinking about before the sun rose in the morning.

  Moving slowly and st
aying out of the light of the campfire, Smoke snuck over to the string of horses where they were tethered along a rope stretched between two trees. He walked along the broncs, his hands lightly touching their rumps so they wouldn’t get nervous and whinny, until he came to the pack animals. Their packs had been removed and sat on the ground next to them, and he was lucky the men hadn’t bothered to take the boxes of supplies and ammunition and explosives up near the fire where they would have been safe.

  It took Smoke five trips to carry all of the boxes of dynamite and gunpowder and extra cartridges a couple of hundred yards away from the camp. He needed them to be that far away for what he had planned. On his last trip, he used his clasp knife to cut the rope holding the horses, but made no effort to scatter them. That would come later.

  When he was far enough away, he opened the boxes and took out fifteen or twenty of the sticks of dynamite, along with their fuses and detonators, and stuck them in a saddlebag. He then took a fuse, cut it two feet long, and stuck it and a detonator into a stick of dynamite. He took a can of gunpowder and, using his skinning knife, he opened the top, wincing at the scraping sound the knife made.

  He set the can between the boxes of dynamite and gunpowder and cartridges and put the stick of dynamite in it, nestling it down into the powder. He struck a match and lit the fuse, and then ran as fast as he could around the edge of the camp until he was on the opposite side from where he’d set the supplies.

  While he waited for the fuse, he took out one of the sticks of dynamite from his saddlebag and stuck a detonator and a very short two-inch fuse into the end of it.

  Three minutes later, the dynamite and gunpowder and cartridges all went up with a tremendous bang. The fireball from the explosion rose fifty feet in the air, and set the top of one of the ponderosa pines on fire.

  The force of the explosion blew men off their feet and tossed them about like rag dolls, causing several to suffer broken arms and lacerations from flying debris.

  The extra cartridges in the pack were set off by the blast, and bullets flew through the air like a swarm of angry hornets, wounding two men. The rest of the gang threw themselves on the ground with their hands over their heads while they screamed in fright and terror as slugs whined past their ears.

  Smoke kept his head down until things had quieted down. Men slowly got to their feet, shaking their heads and pulling their pistols from their holsters as they moved off in the direction of the explosion.

  Suddenly, Daniel Macklin shouted, “Hey, Mr. MacDougal, the horses are all gone!”

  Angus got to his feet and brushed himself off, his ears ringing and his nose running from all the dust and dirt in the air.

  “Well, just don’t stand there, men. Round ‘em up!” he shouted, pointing with both hands as horses ran around in the forest, as frightened as the men were.

  Once all of the men had stumbled out of the camp and out into the woods looking for horses, Smoke leaned over the boulder he was hiding behind and pitched his stick of dynamite into the campfire.

  He’d managed to run only a dozen yards when the dynamite went off, exploding in the campfire and blowing what was left of the camp into smithereens.

  At least half of the men’s saddles were destroyed, along with most of their sleeping blankets and ground covers. All of the rest of the food supplies were ruined, with the exception of several cans of Arbuckle’s coffee, which were smashed and dented but remained somehow intact.

  As the bedraggled group of cowboys and gunslicks limped their way back into what was left of their camp, a light snow started to fall.

  Angus gritted his teeth and glared at the skies above. “This is perfect,” he growled, “just perfect!”

  By the time morning came, Angus’s men had managed to find about three quarters of the horses, and the injured and wounded had been patched up as best they could with what supplies they had remaining.

  Another campfire had been built, and the men breakfasted on coffee made with melted snow. There wasn’t any food left that was worth eating.

  The snow continued to fall, but at least the wind was not too strong, and the temperature actually seemed a bit warmer than it had been the night before.

  All in all, the men counted themselves lucky there’d been no loss of life in the explosions of the night before.

  TWENTY-NINE

  As the bedraggled group of men sat around the campfire drinking their coffee, Angus got to his feet. “I’m not gonna let that bastard Smoke Jensen get away with making Angus MacDougal look like a fool,” he said in a loud voice.

  Off to one side, George Jones whispered to Sam Jackson, “Don’t seem to me like the old man got much choice. The deed’s done been done.”

  Angus glared at the men for interrupting his speech, though he couldn’t hear what they’d said. “As I started to say, Jensen ain’t gonna get away with this. I’m offering five hundred dollars to the man what puts a bullet in Jensen.”

  Carl Jacoby glanced at Mac Macklin, sitting next to him. He shook his head and stood up. “But Mr. MacDougal, that makes us no better’n bounty hunters.”

  “So what, Jacoby?” Angus asked belligerently. “You got a problem with that?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Jacoby answered. “Me and most of the boys here signed on to help you get Jensen ‘cause we knew he’d killed your boy and thought he deserved to be punished.” He paused. “Now a lot of us ain’t all that certain of the facts of what happened in Pueblo last year, and we damn sure didn’t sign on as hired killers.”

  Angus’s face turned beet red and he shouted, “You keep your mouth shut, Jacoby, or you’ll be fired.”

  Jacoby shrugged. “That’s all right, Mr. MacDougal. I don’t think I want to work for you any more anyway.” He turned to the group of men sitting around the fire. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but Mac Macklin and me, along with Sarah MacDougal and Cletus Jones, all think Jensen wasn’t at fault for killing Johnny MacDougal. Now maybe that don’t matter to some of you, but I ain’t gonna hunt down and kill a man what don’t deserve it, no matter how much money Angus offers.” He turned back to Angus. “I quit.”

  “Go on, you coward!” Angus shouted. “None of the rest of the men are going with you.”

  “I don’t know about that, Mr. MacDougal,” Macklin said as he got to his feet. “I ain’t no bounty hunter, and I sure as hell ain’t no killer neither. Wait up, Carl, I’m coming along too.”

  Slowly, almost all of the men around the campfire got to their feet and made their way over to the few remaining horses, some looking at MacDougal with disgust, others with pity, but none looking afraid of him as they used to be.

  Jacoby looked back over his shoulder. “We’ll take the buckboard for the injured men and try and double up on the mounts so we can leave you enough to get back to the ranch on,” he said as they began to hitch up a couple of horses to the wagon and put blankets on the backs of a few others.

  By the time the men had all gone, Angus realized he only had four men staying with him. Jason Biggs and Juan Gomez from his ranch, and Jack Dogget and Joshua Stone from the group that Wally Tupper had gotten from town.

  He nodded and rubbed his hands in front of the fire to get them warm. “You men won’t regret staying,” he said, his eyes gleaming with madness. “I’m gonna make you rich.”

  After the men and Angus had gathered up as much ammunition as they could find that hadn’t been destroyed, they climbed up on their horses and began to follow the tracks Smoke had left when he bombed the camp.

  Angus was in the lead, riding up a narrow trail that skirted the edge of a precipice along the side of the mountain. He could look to the side and see a drop of four hundred feet over the side.

  Suddenly, his horse stumbled, its legs falling into the hole Smoke had filled with sharpened stakes. The horse screamed in pain as the wooden stakes pierced its legs, and it bucked and jumped to the side, falling off the cliff.

  Luckily, Angus had been thrown from the saddle, and fell on th
e edge of the cliff, his arms wrapped around a cluster of small pine trees and holding on for dear life. Dogget and Stone jumped off their mounts and pulled Angus up and over the edge until he was standing on firm ground.

  Angus looked down into the hole and saw the stakes, slapping his thigh and cursing. “That tricky son of a bitch!”

  Dogget and Stone got back on their horses and walked them around the hole and up the trail, ignoring Angus standing there.

  As Biggs and Gomez rode by, Biggs leaned over and offered his hand. Angus took it and swung up on the horse’s back behind him. “Don’t you worry none, Mr. MacDougal,” Biggs drawled “We’ll get that bastard for you.”

  Angus nodded, but he was beginning to have his doubts. So far, Jensen seemed much smarter than the men he’d hired to go after him.

  Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea for him to come up here and lead the group himself.

  Thirty minutes later, as they continued to follow Jensen’s tracks in the snow of the trail along the edge of the cliff, going slow so as not to fall into any more holes, Jack Dogget’s horse tripped a rope stretched across the trail and hidden just under the snow. As the rope was tripped, it let go of a large branch that had been pulled back and tied in place. The branch whipped forward, catching Dogget full in the chest. The force of the blow slammed him backward off his horse and over the cliff in an instant.

  The men riding behind him barely had time to blink before he was out of sight, and all they could hear was his screams as he fell four hundred feet to his death.

  “Sweet Mary Mother of God!” Juan Gomez whispered, crossing himself as his face broke out in a heavy sweat. “Jensen is el Diablo!”

  “What’d you say, Juan?” Angus asked.

  “He said Jensen is the devil,” Biggs answered, his eyes wide, “and I don’t know as what but I agree with him.”