Power of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Smoke’s braided rawhide lariat snaked out soundlessly and settled around the rider’s shoulders, pinning his arms to his sides. A swift yank whipped him out of the saddle before he could give an alarm. His butt’s contact with the solid ground drove the air from his lungs and blackness swam before his eyes, while Smoke Jensen walked the rope to the captive and klonked him solidly behind one ear.

  Using pigging strings from his saddlebags, he secured the unconscious man. Then he dragged the musclebound longshoreman to a shallow ravine and unceremoniously rolled him in. Soundlessly whistling a jolly tune, Smoke recoiled his lariat and strode off into the night. Near the base of the hillock, he found a lone tree, which he scaled with ease. Poised on a sturdy limb, he waited for the passage of another guard.

  Within five minutes, Smoke’s patience was rewarded. Dozing in the saddle, an exhausted railroad policeman approached, his unguided mount in a self-directed amble. Smoke tensed as the animal wandered by under his branch. A moment later, he launched himself. His bootheels struck solidly between the thug’s shoulder blades. Smoke did an immediate backroll off the rump of the startled, shying mount and landed on his feet.

  His target did not fare so well. He ended up on his head. The bones of his neck made a nasty sound when they broke. Smoke Jensen spared only a split second for regret, then moved on.

  He next surprised an adenoidal youth, far too young and green to be in the company of such reprobates as those who surrounded him. His eyes went wide and he wet his drawers when Smoke took him from behind and clamped a big, callused hand over the boy’s mouth. Wisely, the youngster did not struggle. He appreciated his good sense a moment later when Smoke laid the flat of the blade of his Green River against the teenager’s neck.

  Smoke’s urgency carried through the whisper. “If you want to live, make up your mind to take this horse I brought for you and ride clear the hell out of here. Don’t stop and don’t even look back. It’s that, or I slit your gullet and send you off to your Maker.”

  If he could have, the kid would have wet himself again. He certainly wanted to. With effort, he nodded his head up and down. “Mummmf, unnnh—hunnn.”

  “Does that mean you agree?” Smoke whisper-probed.

  “Unnnn—hunnn.”

  Smoke’s voice hissed like Old Man Death himself in the youth’s ear. “If I let you go, you won’t give the alarm?”

  “Nuuh-uuuh.”

  Smoke eased his grip and reached behind him. “All right. Here’s the reins. Walk him about a mile, then hit the saddle and ride like the hounds of hell are after you.” He paused for effect, then put an ominous tone in his voice, knowing what he planned next. “You never know . .. they might be.”

  Panting, the boy showed his gratitude. “Thank you, thankyou-thankyou-thankyou.”

  Smoke looked after the young man as he led the horse off from the mound. Then the last mountain man turned and started uphill. Half way to the top, he paused. He gave the kid another five minutes, then threw back his head, cupped palms around his mouth and gave the mournful howl of a timber wolf.

  19

  Hairs rose at the nape of the neck of every man in the hilltop camp. This time, Heck Grange’s discipline took hold and no one fired wildly into the darkness. That did not keep them from filling their hands with any close-by weapon. Eyes showing a lot of white, they peered tensely into the stygian night. Most had barely conquered their nerves when the wolf howled again.

  This time it seemed to come from closer in. Another wolf answered it from the opposite side of the camp. Fear gripped all of them, especially Cyrus Murchison. His childhood had been filled with thoroughly spuriously stories about wolves carrying off children and devouring them. Now this ingrained myth came back to haunt him.

  “That can’t be Jensen,” he stated shakily to Titus Hobson. “He couldn’t move that fast. There are real wolves out there.”

  His own unease gnawing at his vitals, Titus answered in a subdued voice. “I couldn’t agree more. What are we going to do?”

  “Do? We’ll have to build a fire. No matter those behind us will see it now. We do it or those wolves will be in among us before we know it.”

  “Who is going to move and draw their attention?” Hobson queried.

  “Grange, of course,” Murchison courageously suggested. He raised his voice. “Heck, get a fire started.”

  “Already under way, Mr. Murchison,” the boss gunman answered blandly. “Look for the fire glow reflected in their eyes. We’ll know how many there are that way.”

  A tiny point of light bloomed at the top of the knoll. Kindling began to blaze, and men instinctively moved that way. The two wolves howled again.

  * * *

  Smoke Jensen could not believe his good fortune. A live, breathing wolf had answered his call. He raised his head again and uttered another wail, answered almost at once from the other side of the mound. Scare the be-Jazus outta them, he thought in the manner of Paddy Flynn, an old mountain man friend of Preacher’s.

  Another wolf howl, answered promptly, and then he readied the three horses he had collected from the incautious sentries. He loosened their saddles and removed bits, reins, and headstalls. He got them pointed in the general direction of the hilltop camp and stepped away into the night. A fourth ululating lupine howl sent them off in a panicked canter. Smoke listened intently for the results.

  Cries of alarm and consternation came from the camp moments later, when the frightened creatures blundered in among the men and raced mindlessly past the fire. Three men opened fire. Sparks rose as one of the horses blundered into the fire pit. A man’s voice rose to a shriek.

  “My God, they’re here, they’re after us.”

  Smoke started to make his way back to Thunder when he caught a hint of movement off to his right. A gray-white-and-black object moved stealthily through the darkness. Smoke waited patiently. Then he saw it clearly. Even the distant firelight put a yellow-green phosphorescent glow in those big, intelligent eyes.

  Smoke hunkered down, extended a hand, and uttered the low whine that conveyed friendly submission among wolves. The great, shaggy beast advanced, crouched low, and came forward at a crouch. He sniffed, his educated scent telling a lot about this two-legged being. Slowly, he closed. Another inspection by nose, then the long, wet tongue shot out and licked at the hand of Smoke Jensen.

  “Good boy, good boy,” Smoke whispered. “You came to help. I could send you up there among them to cap this off nicely, but I’m afraid you’d get shot. Go on, now. Go run down a couple of fit raccoons for your supper.” Cautiously, Smoke reached out and patted the wolf. It might be more intelligent than a domesticated dog, Smoke reminded himself but it was still wild.

  A soft whine came from the long gray muzzle and the wolf rolled over on its back, exposing its vulnerable belly. Smoke petted it and then made a shooing motion. He turned and walked away, back toward Thunder. A good night’s work, he reasoned. When they found the lookouts in the morning, that would spook them even more.

  * * *

  When the roving patrol failed to return at the end of their four-hour stint, alarm spread through the camp again. Cyrus Murchison and Heck Grange barely managed to quell the general decision to search at once. By morning’s early light, the gang managed to locate the missing sentries.

  Bound and gagged, all were fully conscious and furious. “It was that goddamned Jensen, I tell you,” one outraged thug growled.

  “There was two wolves out here last night,” Monk Diller stated positively.

  “They sure as hell don’t carry pieces of rope an’ tie up a feller,” the complaining sentry countered. “It was Smoke Jensen.”

  “God . . . damn . . . you . . . Smoke Jensen,” Cyrus Murchison thought, though he did not give voice to his impotent curse.

  Those with even a scant talent toward it cooked up a breakfast of fatback, potatoes, and skillet cornbread. One man with a passing skill as a woodsman found a clump of wild onions to add to the potatoes, and another
dug a huge, fat yucca root to bake in the coals. Their bellies filled, the company of hard cases rode out, headed for the distant pass and Carson City beyond. Try as they might, none of them could find evidence of the presence of Smoke Jensen beyond the bits of rope.

  * * *

  Winds born over the far-off Pacific Ocean pushed thick cumulus clouds toward the coast. They grew as they progressed eastward. Many with fat black bellies climbed beyond 35,000 feet, their heads flattening out into the anvil shape of cumulonimbus. Storm clouds, thunderheads. Steadily they climbed as they raced over San Francisco and beyond to the Central Valley.

  Their outriders arrived over the Sierra Nevada at ten o’-clock in the morning. For the past half hour, Smoke Jensen had been marking the threatening appearance of the sky to the west. When the first dirty-gray billows whisked across the sun, he nodded in understanding and acceptance. Wise in the ways of mountains, Smoke knew for certain a tremendous thunderstorm would soon sweep over them. He made his companions aware of it.

  “Storm’s comin’. Better get out your rain slickers.”

  Tyler Estes, the barber in Grass Valley, gave him a concerned look. “A lot of us don’t have anything. These are borrowed horses and such.”

  Smoke shrugged, indifferent to physical discomfort. “You’ll just get wet, then. Or you can wrap up in your ground sheets.”

  “Our blankets will get wet that way,” Estes protested.

  A quick smile flickered on Smoke’s face. “One way or the other, something is going to get wet.”

  Half an hour later, the first fat drops of rain fell from the solid sea of gray-black clouds. The wind whipped up and whirled last winter’s fallen leaves around the legs and heads of their horses. In a sudden plunge, the temperature fell twenty degrees. “Here it comes,” Smoke warned.

  Already in his bright yellow India rubber slicker, Smoke had only to button up and turn his collar. The brim of his sturdy 5X Stetson kept most of the water out of his face. With their backs to the storm, the posse continued on its way. A trickle of cold rain ran down the back of Smoke Jensen’s collar. The wind gusted higher as he worked to snug it tighter. Then the core of the storm struck.

  Thunder bellowed around then and bright streaks lanced to the ground and trees to one side. The air smelled heavily of ozone. Smoke curled from a lightning-shattered ponderosa. A big hickory smouldered on the opposite side. They had been bracketed by near simultaneous shafts of celestial electricity.

  “B’God, it hit both sides of us,” Estes gulped out the obvious.

  With a seething rattle, like the rush of the tide on a pebbly beach, a curtain of white hurtled toward them from the rear. Visibility dropped to zero and a wall of ice pebbles swept across the huddled men.

  “Owie! Ouch! Hey, this stuff is tearing me up,” a young livery stable hand yelped when the line of hail rushed over the rear of the column.

  “Let’s get under the trees!” Tyler Estes shouted.

  “No!” Smoke turned his mount to stare them down. “You saw what the lightning did to those trees back there, right? Picture bein’ under one of them when it hit. You’d be right sure fried.”

  Estes shivered at the image created by the words of Smoke Jensen. He looked around for some escape, while the hail battered at them all. “What can we do, then?”

  “Dismount and control your horses. Get on the downwind side of them and use them for what shelter it provides. It’ll be over ’fore long.”

  It proved to be damned little protection. Quarter-sized ice balls pelted down to bruise skin protected by no more than a light coat or flannel shirt. Smoke had been right about the duration. Within ten minutes, the hailstorm crashed on to the northeast. It had been with them long enough to turn the ground a glittering white, to a thickness of some three inches.

  “Give me snow anytime,” Brice Rucker complained. “That stuff ain’t hard.”

  Smoke favored him with a glance. “You’ve never seen snow on the high plains, have you? I was there one time with Preacher. We had a heavy snow, followed by an ice storm. The wind got up so that it flung the ice-coated snow at us. It was like razors, it was so sharp. Be thankful for small favors. All we come out of this with is a few bruises.”

  “Few,” the always complaining barber repeated. “I’ll be black and blue for a month.”

  “Too tender a hide, Tyler,” Rucker teased him.

  “Go kiss yer mule, Rucker,” Tyler pouted.

  “One bright spot,” Smoke said through the rain to defuse the testy volunteers. “ Think how that storm is going to play hell with those fellers ahead of us.”

  Wistfulness filled the voice of Tyler Estes. “Yes. They can’t fare any better than us. Worse, more likely.”

  Louis Longmont entered the conversation. “Murchison and Hobson are soft from years of easy living. I would imagine they are completely miserable about now.”

  * * *

  Cyrus Murchison and his motley crew lacked Smoke Jensen’s knowledge of the outdoors, so the storm caught them by surprise. Instantly soaked to the skin, they had not even covered themselves with slickers before the hail had hit. Two men were driven from their saddles by now fist-sized stones of ice. Their horses ran off screaming in misery.

  Turned instantly into a rabble, the men milled about in confusion. The sky turned stark white and a tremendous crash of thunder followed in the blink of an eye. The huge green top of a spectacular lone Sequoia burst into flame and the upper two thirds canted dangerously toward the trail. Then it fell with aching slowness. Fearing for their lives, the hard cases scattered.

  Blazing furiously, the tree dropped across the trail to block forward progress. Its resin-rich leaves spat and hissed in the torrent of rain that fell, unable to quell the flames.

  “If the wind was down, we could put up tents.”

  Cyrus Murchison looked blankly at Titus Hobson. Could the man have completely forgotten everything he had learned about such storms during his mining days? “What good would that do?” he demanded. “The hail would only punch holes through the canvas the minute we stretched it tight.”

  Titus blinked. Why had he not thought of that? He made steeples of his shoulders to hide his embarrassment. “It’s a while since I’ve been out in anything like this.”

  “So I gather,” his partner responded. “We might as well hold fast here until that fire goes out. No sense in taking the risk of men falling into the flames going around it.” He decided to relent on his harsh outburst at Titus. “You’re right, though. When the hail quits, we should set up the tents. A warm, dry camp is bound to be appreciated.”

  Despite the storm-induced darkness, Cyrus judged it to be no more than mid-afternoon. They would lose nearly half a day, yet it would be important to let the runoff firm up the trail. No matter how many men pursued them, they would have been caught in the open, too, he reasoned. And, it might dampen the penchant of Smoke Jensen for those childish, although dangerous, pranks. Only time would tell.

  * * *

  Late that night, Smoke Jensen worked quietly and alone. It had taken him a quarter of an hour to select the right tent and the most suitable sapling. He spent another fifteen minutes in attaching the end of a rope to the springy young tree. Half an hour went by while he painstakingly pulled the limber trunk downward over a pivot point made of a smooth, barkless length of ash limb. He secured it there, then took the other end of the rope and tied it off to the peak of the tent roof.

  With everything in readiness, Smoke stepped back to inspect his handiwork. It pleased him. All he had to do was cut the pigging string that held the spring trap in place and nature would take care of the rest. Suddenly he stiffened at the rustle of sound from inside the tent next to the one he had rigged.

  Groggy with sleep, one of the hard cases stepped through the flap and headed for the low fire in a large stone ring. He had a coffeepot in one hand. The thug must have caught sight of Smoke from the corner of one eye. He turned that way and spoke softly.

  “What’
s up? You drainin’ yer lily?”

  Smoke muffled his voice, turned three-quarters away from his challenger. “Yep.”

  “Too much coffee, or too small a bladder, eh?”

  “Unh-huh.”

  “I reckon I’d best be joinin’ you,” his questioner suggested, as he tucked his speckled blue granite cup behind his belt and reached for his fly.

  He stepped closer and Smoke tensed. The bearded thug fumbled with the buttons as he came up to Smoke. He opened his mouth to make another remark and met a fist-full of knuckles. Bright lights exploded in his head and he rocked over backward. Smoke hit him again under the hinge of his jaw and the man sighed his way into unconsciousness.

  Smoke Jensen stepped quickly to where he had secured the line between the bent sapling and the tent roof. His Green River knife came out and flashed down toward the pigging string. It severed with a snap and the tree instantly swung back toward its natural position. Smoke cut loose with a panther cough and yowl while the tent tie-downs sang musically as they strained, then let go. Like the conjuring trick of a medicine show magician, the tent whisked away, skyward, exposing the sleeping men inside.

  Before anyone could react, Smoke Jensen slipped away into the darkness.

  * * *

  Several of the volunteers gathered around Smoke Jensen the next morning at the breakfast fire. The big granite pot of coffee made its final round. They had eaten well on shaved ham and gravy over biscuits, with the ubiquitous fried potatoes and onions, and tins of peaches and cherries, courtesy of the larder in the private car of Cyrus Murchison. They laughed heartily when he recounted what he had done the night before.

  “Them fellers must have filled their drawers,” Brice Rucker chortled. “Those that were in them, at least. I bet more’n a few jumped right out of their longjohns.”

  “I didn’t wait to see,” Smoke answered dryly. That brought more whoops of lighter. “Saddle up, men, we’ve got them running scared now.”