Trail Of The Mountain Man/revenge Of The Mountain Man (The Last Mountain Man)

by Johnstone, William W.

  It was almost a repeat performance of Nappy and his crew. Except that this time a photographer was there and had his equipment set up, and he was ready to start popping whenever the action began.

  The town marshal, a notorious bully and killer, was leaning up against the bar watching it all, a faint smile on his face. He was not going to interfere on behalf of either side.

  “Mort!” Smoke called.

  The marshal turned and faced Smoke, and his face went a shade paler.

  “Jensen,” he whispered.

  “Either choose a side or get out,” Smoke warned him, clear menace in his voice.

  It was a warning and a challenge that rankled the town marshal, but not one he wanted to pick up. Quick with his guns and his fists, boasting that he had killed seven men, Mort’s reputation was merely a dark smudge on the ground when compared to Smoke’s giant shadow.

  The marshal nodded and walked outside, turning and going swiftly up the street.

  “All right, boys,” York said. “You all know Smoke Jensen. Make your play.”

  The three outlaws drew together. One did not even clear leather before Smoke’s guns belched fire and smoke, the slug striking the outlaw in the center of the chest. The second outlaw that Smoke faced managed to get the muzzle free of leather before twin death-blows of lead hammered at his belly and chest.

  York’s guns had roared and bucked and slammed Natick against a rear wall of the saloon, down but not quite dead.

  Smoke walked to him. “Natick?”

  “What do you want, Jensen?” the outlaw gasped.

  “I know why you broke with Davidson and the others.”

  “Yeah? Why?”

  “Because you may be a lot of bad things, but you’re no baby killer.”

  Natick nodded his bloody head. “Yeah. I couldn’t go along with that. I’m glad it was you boys who done me in. Pull my boots off for me, Jensen?”

  Smoke tugged off the man’s boots. One big toe was sticking through a hole in his sock.

  “Ain’t that pitiful?” Natick observed. “I’ve stole thousands and thousands of dollars and cain’t even afford to buy a pair of socks.” He cut his eyes to Smoke. “Rex and Dagget’s got some bad ones with them, Jensen. Lapeer, Moore, The Hog, Tustin, Shorty, Red, and Jake. Studs Woodenhouse, Tie Medley, Paul Rycroft, Slim Bothwell, and Brute Pitman. I don’t know where they’re hidin’, Jensen, and that’s the truth. But Davidson plans on rapin’ your woman and then killin’ your kid.”

  Natick was whispering low, so only Smoke and York could hear his dying words. The photographer was taking pictures as fast as he could jerk plates and load his dust.

  Smoke bent his head to hear Natick’s words, but the outlaw would speak no more. He was dead.

  Smoke dug in his own pocket and handed some money to a man standing close by. “You’ll see that he gets a proper burial?”

  “I shore will, Mr. Jensen. And it was a plumb honor to see you in action.”

  The photographer fired again.

  The batwings snapped open and a dirty man charged into the bar, holding twin leather bags. “She’s pure, boys. Assayed out high as a cat’s back. The drinks is on me! Git them damn stiffs outta the way!”

  17

  John and his sons and daughters and their families looked at the pictures John had sent in from New York, looked at them in horror.

  Bodies were sprawling in the street, on the boardwalks, hanging half in and half out of broken windows. One was facedown in a horse trough, another was sprawled in stiffened death beside the watering trough.

  And John’s son-in-law, Smoke Jensen, handsome devil that he was, was standing on the boardwalk, calmly rolling a cigarette.

  “That’s my Smoke!” Sally said, pointing.

  Smoke was wearing his guns cross-draw, and he had another one tucked behind his gunbelt. In another picture, the long-bladed Bowie knife he carried behind one gun could be clearly seen. In still another picture, Smoke was sitting on the edge of the boardwalk, eating an apple. In the left side of the picture, bodies could be seen hanging from the gallows.

  John’s stomach felt queasy. He laid the pictures aside and stifled a burp when Sally grabbed them up and began glancing at them.

  “There’s a bandage on Smoke’s head,” she noted. “But I can’t see that he was shot anywhere else.”

  “Who is that handsome man standing beside him?” Walter’s sister-in-law asked. “He’s so…rugged-looking!”

  “Lord, Martha!” her sister exclaimed. “He’s savage-looking!”

  “He’s some sort of law enforcement officer,” Walter explained, examining the picture. But his badge is somewhat different from…ah…Smoke’s. Excuse my hesitation, Sister, but I never heard of a man being called Smoke.”

  “Get used to it, Walt,” Sally said, a testy note to her statement. After being in the West, with its mostly honest and open and non-pompous people, the East was beginning to grate on her more and more.

  Her father picked up on her testiness. “Sally, dearest, it’ll soon be 1882. No one carries a gun around here except the law officers, and many times they don’t even carry a gun, only a club. There hasn’t been an Indian attack in this area in anyone’s memory! We are a quiet community, with plans underway to have a college here; a branch of the state university. We are a community of laws, darling. We don’t have gunfights in the streets. Keene was settled almost a hundred and fifty years ago….”

  “Yes, Father,” Sally said impatiently. “I know. 1736, as a matter of fact. It’s a nice, quiet, stable, pleasant little community. But I’ve grown away from it. Father, Mother, all of you…have you ever stood on the Great Divide? Have you ever ridden up in the High Lonesome, where you knew you could look for a hundred miles and there would be no other human being? Have any of you ever watched eagles soar and play in the skies, and knew yours were the only eyes on them? No, no you haven’t. None of you. You don’t even have a loaded gun in this house. None of you women would know what to do if you were attacked. You haven’t any idea how to fire a gun. All you ladies know how to do is sit around looking pretty and attend your goddamn teas!”

  John wore a pained expression on his face. Abigail started fanning herself furiously. Sally’s brothers wore frowns on their faces. Her sisters and sisters-in-law looked shocked.

  Martha laughed out loud. “I have my teacher’s certificate, Sally. Do you suppose there might be a position for me out where you live?”

  “Martha!” her older sister hissed. “You can’t be serious. There are…savages out there!”

  “Oh…piddly-poo!” Martha said. She would have liked to have the nerve to say something stronger, like Sally, but didn’t want to be marked as a scarlet woman in this circle.

  “We’re looking for a schoolteacher right this moment, Martha,” Sally told her. “And I think you’d be perfect. When Smoke gets here, we’ll ask him. If he says you’re the choice, then you can start packing.”

  Martha began clapping her hands in excitement.

  “Smoke is a one-man committee on the hiring of teachers?” Jordan sniffed disdainfully.

  “Would you want to buck him on anything, Brother?”

  Jordan stroked his beard and remained silent. Unusually so for a lawyer.

  Smoke and York left Leadville the next morning, riding out just at dawn. They rode north, past Fremont Pass, then cut east toward Breckenridge. No sign of Davidson or Dagget or any of the others with them. They rode on, with Bald Mountain to the south of them, following old trails. They kept Mount Evans to their north and gradually began the winding down toward the town of Denver.

  “We gonna spend some time in Denver City?” York asked.

  “Few days. Maybe a week. We both need to get groomed and curried and bathed, and our clothes are kind of shabby-looking.”

  “My jeans is so thin my drawers is showin’,” York agreed. “If we goin’ east, I reckon we’re gonna have to get all duded up like dandies, huh?”

  “No way,” Smoke
’s reply was grim. “I’m tired of pretending to be something I’m not. We’ll just dress like what we are. Westerners.”

  York sighed. “That’s a relief. I just cain’t see myself in one of them goofy caps like you wore back in Dead River.”

  Smoke laughed at just the thought. “And while we’re here, I’ve got to send some wires. Find out how Sally is doing and find out what’s happened up on the Sugarloaf.”

  “Pretty place you got, Smoke?”

  “Beautiful. And there’s room for more. Lots of room. You ever think about getting out of law work, York?”

  “More and more lately. I’d like to have me a little place. Nothin’ fancy; nothin’ so big me and a couple more people couldn’t handle it. I just might drift up that way once this is all over.”

  “You got a girl?”

  “Naw. I ain’t had the time. Captain’s been sendin’ me all over the territory ever since I started with the Rangers. I reckon it’s time for me to start thinking about settlin’ down.”

  “You might meet you an eastern gal, York.” Smoke was grinning.

  “Huh! What would I do with her? Them eastern gals is a different breed of cat. I read about them. All them teas and the like. I got to have me a woman that’ll work right alongside me. You know what ranchin’ is like. Hard damn work.”

  “It is that. But my Sally was born back east. Educated all over the world. She’s been to Paris!”

  “Texas?”

  “France.”

  “No kiddin’! I went to Dallas once. Biggest damn place I ever seen. Too damn many people to suit me. I felt all hemmed in.”

  “It isn’t like that up in the High Lonesome. I think you’d like it up there, York. We need good stable people like you. Give it some thought. I’ll help you get started; me and Sally.”

  “Right neighborly of y’all. Little tradin’ post up ahead. Let’s stop. I’m out of the makin’s.”

  While York was buying tobacco, Smoke sat outside, reading a fairly recent edition of a Denver paper. The city was growing by leaps and bounds. The population was now figured at more than sixty thousand.

  “Imagine that,” Smoke muttered. “Just too damn many folks for me.”

  He read on. A new theatre had been built, the Tabor Grand Opera House. He read on, suddenly smiling. He checked the date of the paper. It was only four days old.

  “You grinnin’ like a cat lickin’ cream, Smoke,” York said, stepping out and rolling a cigarette. “What got your funny bone all quiverin’?”

  “And old friend of mine is in town, York. And I just bet you he’d like to ride east with us.”

  “Yeah? Lawman?”

  “Businessman, scholar, gambler, gunfighter.”

  “Yeah?” Who might that be?”

  “Louis Longmont.”

  “By the Lord Harry!” Louis exclaimed, standing up from his table in the swanky restaurant and waving at Smoke. “Waiter! Two more places here, s’il vous plait.”

  “What the hell did he say?” York whispered.

  “Don’t ask me,” Smoke returned the whisper.

  The men all shook hands, Smoke introducing York to Louis. Smoke had not seen Louis since the big shoot-out at Fontana more than a year ago. The man had not changed. Handsome and very sure of himself. The gray just touching his hair at the temples.

  Smoke also noted the carefully tailored suit, cut to accommodate a shoulder holster.

  Same ol’ Louis.

  After the men had ordered dinner—Louis had to do it, the menu being in French—drinks were brought around and Longmont toasted them both.

  “I’ve been reading about the exploits of you men,” Louis remarked after sipping his Scotch. York noticed that all their liquor glasses had funny-looking square bits of ice in them, which did make the drink a bit easier on the tongue.

  “We’ve been busy,” Smoke agreed.

  “Still pursuing the thugs?”

  “You know we are, Louis. You would not have allowed your name to appear in the paper if you hadn’t wanted us to find you in Denver.”

  York sat silent, a bit uncomfortable with the sparkling white tablecloth and all the heavy silverware—he couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to do; after all, he couldn’t eat but with one fork and one knife, no how. And he had never seen so many duded-up men and gussied-up women in all his life. Even with new clothes on, it made a common fella feel shabby.

  “Let’s just say,” Louis said, “I’m a bit bored with it all.”

  “You’ve been traveling about?”

  “Just returned from Paris a month ago. I’d like to get back out in the country. Eat some beans and beef and see the stars above me when I close my eyes.”

  “Want to throw in with us, Louis?”

  Louis lifted his glass. “I thought you were never going to ask.”

  Smoke and York loafed around Denver for a few days, while Louis wrapped up his business and Smoke sent and received several wires. Sally was fine; the baby was due in two months—approximately.

  “What does she mean by that?” York asked, reading over Smoke’s shoulder.

  “It means, young man,” Louis said, “that babies do not always cooperate with a timetable. The child might be born within several weeks of that date, before it or after it.”

  Louis was dressed in boots, dark pants, gray shirt, and black leather vest. He wore two guns, both tied down and both well-used and well-taken care of, the wooden butts worn smooth with use.

  York knew that Louis Longmont, self-made millionaire and world-famous gambler, was a deadly gunslinger. And a damn good man to have walkin’ with you when trouble stuck its head up, especially when that trouble had a six-gun in each hand.

  “Do tell,” York muttered.

  “What’s the plan, Smoke?” Louis asked.

  “You about ready to pull out?”

  “Is tomorrow morning agreeable with you?”

  “Fine. The sooner the better. I thought we’d take our time, ride across Kansas; maybe as far as St. Louis if time permits. We can catch a train anywhere along the way. And by riding, we just might pick up some information about Davidson and his crew.”

  “Sounds good. Damn a man who would even entertain the thought of harming a child!”

  “We pull out at dawn.”

  Sally had not shown her family all the wires she’d received from Smoke. She did not wish to alarm any of them, and above all, she did not wish to alert the local police as to her husband’s suspicions about Davidson and his gang traveling east after her and the baby. Her father would have things done the legal way—ponderous and, unknowing to him, very dangerous for all concerned. John had absolutely no idea of what kind of man this Rex Davidson was.

  But Sally did. And Smoke could handle it, his way. And she was glad Louis and York were with him.

  York just might be the ticket for Martha out of the East and into the still wild and wide-open West. He was a good-looking young man.

  The servant answered the door and Martha entered the sitting room. Sally waved her to a chair with imported antimacassars on the arms and back. The day was warm, and both women fanned themselves to cool a bit.

  “I was serious about going west, Sally.”

  “I thought as much. And now,” she guessed accurately, “you want to know all about it.”

  “That’s right.”

  Where to start? Sally thought. And how to really explain about the vastness and the emptiness and the magnificence of it all?

  Before she could start, the door opened again, and this time the room was filled with small children: Sally’s nieces and nephews and a few of their friends.

  “Aunt Sally,” a redheaded, freckle-faced boy said. “Will you tell us about Uncle Smoke?”

  “I certainly will.” She winked at Martha. “I’ll tell you all about the High Lonesome and the strong men who live there.”

  They pulled out at first light. Three men who wore their guns as a part of their being. Three men who had faced death and beaten
it so many times none of them could remember all the battles.

  Louis had chosen a big buckskin-colored horse with a mean look to his eyes. The horse looked just about as mean as Smoke knew Drifter really was.

  Before leaving Denver, Smoke had wired Jim Wilde and asked for both York and Louis to be formally deputized as U.S. Marshals. The request had been honored within the day.

  So they were three men who now wore official badges on their chests. One, a millionaire adventurer. One, a successful rancher. One, a young man who was only weeks away from meeting the love of his life.

  They rode east, veering slightly south, these three hard-eyed and heavily armed men. They would continue a southerly line until reaching a trading post on the banks of the Big Sandy; a few more years and the trading post would become the town of Limon.

  At the trading post, they would cut due east and hold to that all the way across Kansas. They would stay south of Hell Creek, but on their ride across Colorado, they would ford Sand Creek, an offshoot of the Republican River. They would ride across Spring Creek, Landsman, East Spring, and cross yet another Sand Creek before entering into Kansas.

  Kansas was still woolly but nothing like it had been a few years back when the great cattle herds were being driven up from Texas, and outlaws and gunfighters were just about anywhere one wished to look.

  But the three men rode with caution. The decade had rolled into the eighties, but there were still bands of Indians who left the reservation from time to time; still bands of outlaws that killed and robbed. And they were riding into an area of the country where men still killed other men over the bitterness of that recent unpleasantness called by some the Civil War and by others the War Between the States.

  The days were warm and pleasant or hot and unpleasant as the men rode steadily eastward across the plains. But the plains were now being dotted and marred and scarred with wire. Wire put up by farmers to keep ranchers’ cattle out. Wire put up by ranchers to keep nesters out of water holes, creeks, and rivers. Ranchers who wished to breed better cattle put up wire to keep inferior breeds from mixing in and to keep prize bulls at home.