Pearlie was leaning up against a hitch rail and Smoke winked at his friend and foreman.
“If I hadn’t a-been out with the hands the other night…” Billy said.
Smoke cut him off. “And if your aunt had wheels, she’d have been a tea cart, Billy. You and the hands were doing what I asked you to do—pushing cattle up to the high grass. Can’t any of you blame yourselves for what happened.”
“I don’t think my aunt had no wheels, Smoke,” Billy said solemnly. Then he realized that Smoke was funning with him and he smiled. “That would be a sight to see though, wouldn’t it?”
Pearlie walked up to the man and boy. “We’ll be all right here, Billy. I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re a top hand.”
Billy grinned at the high compliment.
When the foreman and the boy had walked away, Smoke stepped back into the house and fixed breakfast for Sally, taking it to her on a tray. He positioned pillows behind her shoulders and gently eased her to an upright position in the bed.
He sat by the bed and watched her eat; slowly she was regaining her strength and appetite. But she was still very weak and had to be handled with caution.
She would eat a few bites and then rest for a moment, gathering strength.
“I’m getting better, Smoke,” she told him with a smile. “And the food is beginning to taste good.”
“I can tell. At first I thought it was my cooking,” he kidded her. “Your color is almost back to normal. Feel like telling me more about what happened?”
She ate a few more bites and then pushed the tray from her. “It’s all come back to me. The doctor said it would. He said that sometimes severe traumas can produce temporary memory loss.”
Colton had told Smoke the same thing.
She looked at him. “It was close, wasn’t it?”
“You almost died, honey.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them, saying, “I remember the time. Nine o’clock. I was just getting ready for bed. I remember glancing at the clock. I was in my gown.” Her brow furrowed in painful remembrance, physically and mentally. “I heard a noise outside, or so I thought. But when it wasn’t repeated, I ignored it. I walked in here, to the bedroom, and then I heard the noise again. I remember feeling a bit frightened….”
“Why?” he interrupted. He was curious, for Sally was not the spooky or flighty kind. She had used a rifle and pistol several times since settling here, and had killed or wounded several outlaws.
“Because it was not a natural sound. It was raining, and I had asked Billy, when he came in to get lunch packets for the crew, to move the horses into the barn, to their stalls for the night. Bad move, I guess. If Seven or Drifter had been in the corral, they would have warned me.”
“I would have done the same thing, Sally. Stop blaming yourself. Too much of that going on around here. It was nobody’s fault. It happened, it’s over, and it’s not going to happen again. Believe me, I will see to that.”
And she knew he would.
“When the noise came again, it was much closer, like someone brushing up against the side of the house. I was just reaching for a pistol when the front door burst open. Three men; at least three men. I got the impression there was more, but I saw only three. I heard three names. I did tell you the names, didn’t I? That part is hazy.”
“Yes.”
“Dagget, Lapeer, and Moore. Yes. Now I remember telling you. The one called Dagget smiled at me. Then he said”—she struggled to remember—“‘Too bad we don’t have more time. I’d like to see what’s under that gown.’ Then he lifted his pistol and shot me. No warning. No time at all to do anything. He just lifted his gun and shot me. As I was falling, the other two shot me.”
Smoke waited, his face expressionless. But his inner thoughts were murderous.
Sally closed her eyes, resting for a moment before once more reliving the horrible night. “Just as I was falling into darkness, losing consciousness, I heard one say, ‘Now the son of a bitch has us all to deal with.’”
And I will deal with you, Smoke thought. One by one, on a very personal basis. I will be the judge, the jury, and the executioner.
Smoke started to roll and light one of his rare cigarettes, then thought better of it. The smoke might cause Sally to cough and he knew that would be harmful.
“Do you know any of the men I mentioned, Smoke?”
“No. I can’t say that I’ve even heard of them.” There was a deep and dangerous anger within him. But he kept his voice and his emotions well in check. He hated night riders, of any kind. He knew those types of people were, basically, cowards.
He kept his face bland. He did not want Sally to get alarmed, although he knew that she knew exactly what he was going to do once she was safely on the train heading east. He also knew that when she did mention it—probably only one time—she would not attempt to stop him.
That was not her way. She had known the kind of man he was when she married him.
He met her eyes, conscious of her staring at him, and smiled at her. She held out a hand and Smoke took it, holding it gently.
“It’s a mystery to me, honey,” she said. “I just don’t understand it. The valley has been so peaceful for so many months. Not a shot fired in anger. Now this.”
Smoke hushed her, taking the lap tray. He had never even heard of a lap tray until Sally had sent off for one from somewhere back east. “You rest now. Sleep. You want some more laudanum?”
She minutely shook her head. “No. Not now. The pain’s not too bad. That stuff makes my head feel funny.”
She was sleeping even before Smoke had closed the door.
He scraped the dishes and washed them in hot water taken from the stove, then pumped a pot full of fresh water and put that on the stove, checking the wood level that heated the back plate and checking the draft. He peeled potatoes for lunch and dropped them into cold water. Then he swept the floor and tidied up the main room, opening all the windows to let the house cool.
Then the most famous and feared gunfighter in all the west washed clothes, wrung them out, and hung them up to dry on the clothesline out back, the slight breeze and the warm sun freshening them naturally.
He walked around to the front of the cabin and sat beside the bedroom window, open just a crack, so he could hear Sally if she needed anything.
Lapeer, Moore, and Dagget. He rolled those names around in his mind as his fingers skillfully rolled a cigarette. He had never heard of any of them. But he knew one thing for certain.
They were damn sure going to hear from him.
3
Smoke did not leave the Sugarloaf range for weeks. If supplies were needed, one of the hands went into town for them. Smoke did not want to stray very far from Sally’s side.
The days passed slowly, each one bringing another hint of the summer that lay lazily before them. And Sally grew stronger. Two weeks after the shooting, she was able to walk outside, with help, and sit for a time, taking the sun, taking it easy, growing stronger each day.
Smoke had spoken with Sheriff Monte Carson several times since the posse’s return from a frustrating and fruitless pursuit. But Monte was just as baffled as Smoke as to the why of Sally’s attack and the identity of the attackers.
Judge Proctor had been queried, as well as most of the other people around the valley. No one had ever heard of the men.
It was baffling and irritating.
Not even the legended Smoke could fight an enemy he could not name and did not know and could not find.
Yet.
But he was going to find them, and when he did, he was going to make some sense out of this.
Then he would kill them.
It was midsummer before Dr. Colton Spalding finally gave Sally the okay to travel. During that time, he had wired the hospital in Boston several times, setting up Sally’s operation. The doctor would use a rather risky procedure called a caesarean to take the baby—if it came to that. But the Boston doc
tor wanted to examine Sally himself before he elected to use that drastic a procedure. And according to Dr. Spalding, the Boston doctor was convinced a caesarean was necessary.
“What’s this operation all about?” Smoke asked Dr. Spalding.
“It’s a surgical procedure used to take the baby if the mother can’t delivery normally.”
“I don’t understand, but I’ll take your word for it. Is it dangerous?”
Colton hesitated. With Smoke, it was hard to tell exactly what he knew about any given topic. When they had first met, the doctor thought the young man to be no more than an ignorant brute, a cold-blooded killer. It didn’t take Colton long to realize that while Smoke had little formal education, he was widely read and quite knowledgeable.
And Colton also knew that Smoke was one of those rare individuals one simply could not lie to. Smoke’s un-blinking eyes never left the face of the person who was speaking. Until you grew accustomed to it, it was quite unnerving.
Before Colton could speak, Smoke said, “Caesar’s mother died from this sort of thing, didn’t she?”
The doctor smiled, shaking his head. Many of the men of the West were fascinating with what they knew and how they had learned it. It never ceased to amaze the man to see some down-at-the-heels puncher, standing up in a barroom quoting Shakespeare or dissertating on some subject as outrageous as astrology.
And knowing what he was talking about!
“Yes, it is dangerous, Smoke. But not nearly so dangerous as when Caesar was born.”
“Let’s hope not. What happens if Sally decides not to have this operation?”
“One of two things, Smoke. You will decide whether you want Sally saved, or the baby.”
“I won’t be there, Doc. So I’m telling you now—save my wife. You pass the word along to this doctor friend of yours in Boston town. Save Sally at all costs. You’ll do that, right?”
“You know I will. I’ll wire him first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you.”
Colton watched as Smoke helped Sally back to bed. He had not fully leveled with the young man about the surgical procedure. Colton knew that sometimes the attending physician had very little choice as to who would be saved. And sometimes, mother and child both died.
He sighed. They had come so far in medicine, soaring as high as eagles in such a short time. But doctors still knew so very little…and were expected to perform miracles at all times.
“Would that it were so,” Colton muttered, getting into his buggy and clucking at the mare.
As the weather grew warmer and the days grew longer, Sally grew stronger…and was beginning to show her pregnancy. Several of the women who lived nearby would come over almost daily, to sew and talk and giggle about the damndest things.
Smoke left the scene when all that gabble commenced.
And he was still no closer to finding out anything about the men who attacked his wife.
Leaving Sally and the women, with two hands always on guard near the cabin, Smoke saddled the midnight-black horse with the cold, killer eyes, and he and Drifter went to town.
The town of Fontana, once called No Name, which had been Tilden Franklin’s town, was dying just as surely as Tilden had died under Smoke’s guns. Only a few stores remained open, and they did very little business.
It was to the town of Big Rock that Smoke rode, his .44s belted around his lean waist and tied down, the Henry rifle in his saddle boot.
Big Rock was growing as Fontana was dying. A couple of nice cafés, a small hotel, one saloon, with no games and no hurdy-gurdy girls. There was a lawyer, Hunt Brook, and his wife, Willow, and a newspaper, the Big Rock Guardian, run by Haywood and Dana Arden. Judge Proctor, the reformed wino, was the district judge and he made his home in Big Rock, taking his supper at the hotel every evening he was in town. Big Rock had a church and a schoolhouse.
It was a nice quiet little town; but as some men who had tried to tree it found out, Big Rock was best left alone.
Johnny North, who had married the widow Belle Colby after her husband’s death, was—or had been—one of the West’s more feared and notorious gunfighters. A farmer/rancher now, Johnny would, if the situation called for it, strap on and tie down his guns and step back into his gunfighter’s boots. Sheriff Monte Carson, another ex-gunfighter, was yet another gunhawk to marry a grass widow and settle in Big Rock. Pearlie, Smoke’s foreman, had married and settled down; but Pearlie had also been, at one point in his young life, a much-feared and respected fast gun. The minister, Ralph Morrow, was an ex-prizefighter from back east, having entered the ministry after killing a man with his fists. Ralph preached on Sundays and farmed and ranched during the week. Ralph would also pick up a gun and fight, although most would rather he wouldn’t. Ralph couldn’t shoot a short gun worth a damn!
Big Rock and the area surrounding it was filled with men and women who would fight for their families, their homes, and their lands.
The dozen or so outlaws who rode into town with the thought of taking over and having their way with the women some months back soon found that they had made a horrible and deadly mistake. At least half of them died in their saddles, their guns in their hands. Two more were shot down in the street. Two died in the town’s small clinic. The rest were hanged.
The word soon went out along the hoot-owl trail: Stay away from Big Rock. The town is pure poison. Folks there will shoot you quicker than a cat can scat.
Smoke caught up with Johnny North, who was in town for supplies. The two of them found Sheriff Carson and went to the Big Rock saloon for a couple of beers and some conversation. The men sipped their beers in silence for a time. Finally, after their mugs had been refilled, Johnny broke the silence.
“I been thinkin’ on it some, Smoke. I knew I’d heard that name Dagget somewheres before, but I couldn’t drag it out of my head and catch no handle on it. It come to me last night. I come up on that name down near the Sangre de Cristo range a few years back. It might not be the same fellow, but I’m bettin’ it is. Sally’s description of him fits what I heard. If it is, he’s a bad one. Bounty hunter and bodyguard to somebody. I don’t know who. I ain’t never heard of the two other men with him.”
“I ain’t never heard of any of them,” Monte said sourly. “And I thought I knew every gunslick west of the Big Muddy. That was any good, that is.”
“Dagget don’t ride the rim much,” Johnny explained. “And he only takes jobs his boss wants him to take. If this is the same fellow, he’s from back east somewheres. Came out here about ten years ago. Supposed to be from a real good family back there. Got in trouble with the law and had to run. But his family seen to it that he had plenty of money. What he done, so I’m told, is link up with some other fellow and set them up an outlaw stronghold; sort of like the Hole-In-The-Wall. All this is just talk; I ain’t never been there.”
Smoke nodded his head. Something else had jumped into his mind; something the old mountain man, Preacher, had said one time. Something about the time he’d had to put lead into a fellow who lived down near the Sangre de Cristo range. But what was the man’s name? Was it Davidson? Yes. Rex Davidson.
“Rex Davidson,” Smoke said it aloud.
Both Monte and Johnny stiffened at the name, both men turning their heads to look at Smoke.
When Johnny spoke, his voice was soft. “What’d you say, Smoke?”
Smoke repeated the name.
Monte whistled softly. “I really hope he ain’t got nothing to do with the attack agin Sally.”
Smoke looked at him. “Why?”
Monte finished his beer and motioned the two men outside, to the boardwalk. He looked up and down the street and then sat down on the wooden bench in front of the saloon, off to the side from the batwing entrance. Johnny and Smoke joined him.
“That name you just mentioned, Smoke…what do you know about him?”
“Absolutely nothing. I heard Preacher mention it one time, and one time only. That was years back, when I was just a
kid. The name is all I know except that Preacher told me he had to put lead into him one time.”
Monte nodded his head. “So that’s it. Well, that clears it up right smart. Finishes the tale I been hearin’ for years. I’ll just be damned, boys!”
The men waited until Monte had rolled and licked a cigarette into shape and lighted it.
“Must have been…oh, at least twenty years back, so the story goes. Rex Davidson was about twenty, I guess. Might have been a year or two younger than that. I don’t know the whole story; just bits and pieces. But this Davidson had just come into the area from somewheres. California, I think it was. And he though he was castin’ a mighty big shadow wherever it was he walked. He was good with a gun, and a mighty handsome man, too. I seen him once, and he is a lady killer. What’s the word I’m lookin’ for? Vain, that’s it. Pretties himself up all the time.
“There was a tradin’ post down on the Purgatoire called Slim’s. Run by a Frenchman. It’s still there, and the same guy runs it. Only now it’s a general store. It sits east and some north of Trinidad, where the Francisco branches off from the Purgatoire.
“This Davidson was there, braggin’ about how he was gettin’ rich diggin’ gold and running cattle up between the Isabel and the Sangre de Cristos. Said he was gonna build hisself a town. Done it, too.”
Monte dragged on his cigarette and Johnny said, “Dead River.”
“You got it.”
“Damn good place to stay shut of.”
“Sure is,” Monte ground out his smoke under the heel of his boot. “Whole damn town is owned by this Davidson and maybe by this Dagget, too. Anyways, this was back…oh, ’bout ’60, I reckon, and this mountain man come into the tradin’ post with some pelts he’d taken up near the Apishapa and the Arkansas. Him and Slim was jawin’ over the price when this Rex Davidson decided he’d stick his nose into the affair. He made some crack about the mountain man’s weapons and the way he was talkin’. This mountain man wasn’t no big fellow; but size don’t amount to a hill of beans when you start gettin’ smart-lipped with them people—as you well know, Smoke.”
Trail Of The Mountain Man/revenge Of The Mountain Man (The Last Mountain Man) Page 26