Trail of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Louis buttered a piece of toasted bread and then spread preserves on top of that. The preserves, Smoke was sure, were imported. “Smoke, you know, or I hope you do, that I will back you to the hilt ... in whatever you do. Regardless of whether I think you are right or wrong. Preacher saved my life a number of times, and besides that, you are a very good young man. But whether our newly elected law is worth a tinker’s damn or not, in this mineral rights matter Tilden Franklin is legal. And the law is on his side. Smoke, the land can be repaired. Another hole in the ground is not worth a shooting or a hanging. Your herds? Well, that is quite another matter.” He glanced at Smoke, a twinkle in his hard eyes. “There is no law out here that says a man can’t hang or shoot a rustler or a horse thief — if you get my drift.”

  Smoke got it. And he would pass the word to the other small farmer-ranchers. Then they would ride out and advise the miners that there would be no trouble, providing the herds of cattle and horses were left alone. But trample over someone’s garden, stampede one herd, cut out one beeve, or steal one horse, and someone was going to die.

  And then, if any or all those things happened, they would have to have the raw nerve to carry the threat through.

  The French chef placed a plate before Smoke. Smoke looked at the food on the plate. Damned if he knew what it was. He said as much.

  Then the chef reached down with a lighted match, set fire to the stuff, and Smoke jumped out of his chair.

  Louis had a good laugh out of that. “Sit down, Smoke. Enjoy your breakfast.”

  “Hell, I can’t eat fire!”

  The flames abated and the chef departed, chuckling. Louis smiled. “Those are crepes suzette, my young friend. This dish.” He tapped another plate with a knife blade. “Is an au jambon.”

  “Do tell?”

  “An omelette, with bits of ham,” Louis explained. “Now eat and enjoy.”

  Them crap susies was a tad too sweet for Smoke’s taste, but the omelette was tasty. He made a mental note to tell Sally about what he had had for a late breakfast. Maybe she’d heard of them; damned if he ever had.

  “Either way,” Smoke said, “I think we’re all looking at a lot of trouble just up the road.”

  “I share your feelings, Smoke. But why not postpone it as long as possible. You know this strike is not going to last. In six months it will have seen its heyday.”

  “I can’t figure you, Louis. I never ...” He bit off the words just at the last possible second.

  The gambler-gunfighter did not take umbrage at what he suspected Smoke had been about to say. Instead, he smiled and finished it for him. “Never knew me to back off from trouble, Smoke?”

  “I apologize for thinking it, Louis.”

  Louis smiled and shook his head. “No need for any of that — not between friends.” He sighed. “But you’re right, Smoke. I am trying to avoid trouble. Not for my sake,” he was quick to add. “But for yours.”

  Smoke laid down his fork. “My sake?”

  “Listen to me, my young friend. How many guns do you have? A dozen? Maybe fifteen at the most? Tilden has seventy-five hardcases right now and can pull in two hundred more anytime he wishes, and will. Talk is that Luis Chamba is on his way here. And where Luis goes, Sanderson and Kane go with him. Think about it.”

  Smoke thought about it, and the more he thought about it the madder he got. Louis saw his expression change and tried to calm the young man down.

  “No, Louis. No. Don’t you see what Tilden is trying to pull?”

  “Of course I do, boy! But give it time. In six months this area of the country will be right back where it was a month ago. Farm and ranch country. This town will dry up with only a few of the businesses remaining. I’m betting Tilden won’t want to be king of nothing.”

  “He won’t be king of nothing, Louis. For if we don’t fight, he’ll kill us all one by one. He’ll make some grand gesture of buying out the widows or the kids — through some goddamned lawyer — and then he’ll own this entire section of the state of Colorado. Everything!”

  Louis nodded his head. “Maybe you’re right, Smoke. Maybe you’re right. If that’s the case, then you’ve got to start hiring guns of your own. You and your wife have the means to do so; if you don’t, let me advance you the money.”

  Suddenly, Smoke thought of something. In a way it was a cruel thought, but it was also a way for a lot of broke, aging men to gather in one final blaze of glory. The more he thought about it, the better he liked it, and his mood began to lighten. But he’d have to bounce it off Charlie first.

  “Why are you smiling, Smoke?” Louis asked.

  “Louis, you’re one of the best gamblers around, aren’t you?”

  “Some say I am one of the best in the world, Smoke. I should think my numerous bank accounts would back up that claim. Why do you ask?”

  “Suppose you suddenly learned you were dying, or suppose some ... well, call it fate ... started dealing you bad hands and you ended up broke and old — anything along that line — and then someone offered you the chance to once more live in glory. Your kind of glory. Would you take it, Louis, or would you think the offer to be cruel?”

  “What an interesting thought! Say now ... cruel? Oh, no. Not at all. I would jump at the opportunity. But ... what are you thinking of, Smoke? I’m not following this line of questioning at all.”

  “You will, Louis.” Smoke stood up and smiled. His smile seemed to Louis to be rather mysterious. “You will. And I think you’ll find it to your liking. I really believe you will.”

  Long after Smoke had plopped his hat on his head, left the gaming room, and ridden out of town, Louis Longmont had sat at the table and thought about what his young friend had said.

  Then he began smiling. Soon the smile had turned to chuckling and the chuckling to hard laughter.

  “Oh ...” he managed to say over the pealing laughter. “I love it!”

  17

  Smoke sat with Sally, Pearlie, and Charlie. Charlie listened to what Smoke had on his mind and then leaned back in his chair, a broad smile on his face. He laughed and slapped his knee.

  “Smoke, that’s the bes’ idee I’ve heard of in a long, long time. Cruel? No, sir. It ain’t cruel. What you’re talkin’ about is what they do bes’. You give me the wherewithal and I’ll have an even dozen here in a week, soon as I can get to a telegraph and get hold of them and get some money to them.”

  “Name them, Charlie.”

  “Oh ... well, there’s Luke Nations, Pistol Le Roux, Bill Foley, Dan Greentree, Leo Wood, Cary Webb, Sunset Hatfield, Crooked John Simmons, Bull Flagler, Toot Tooner, Sutter Cordova, Red Shingletown ... give me time and I’ll name some more.”

  Pearlie said, “But all them old boys is dead!”

  “No, they ain’t neither,” Charlie corrected. “They just re-tared is all.”

  “Well ...” Pearlie thought a moment. “Then they mus’ be a hundred years old!”

  “Naw!” Charlie scoffed at that. “You jus’ a kid, is all. They all in their sixties.”

  “I’ve met some of them. Charlie, I don’t want to be responsible for any of them going to their deaths.”

  “Smoke ... it’s the way they’d want it. If they all died, they’d go out thankin’ you for the opportunity to show the world they still had it in them. Let them go out in a blaze of glory, Smoke.”

  Smoke thought about it. That was the way Preacher would have wanted to go. And those old Mountain Men three years back, that’s how they had wanted it. “All right, Charlie. We’ll give you the money and you can pull out at first light. Me and Pearlie will start adding on to the bunkhouse. How many do you think will be here?”

  “When the word gets out, I’d look for about twenty-five or so.” Charlie said it with a smile. “You gonna have to hire you a cook to help Miss Sally. Or you’ll work her to a frazzle, Smoke.”

  “All right. Do you know an old camp cook?”

  “Shore do. Dad Weaver. He can cook and he can still pull a trigge
r too. One about as good as the other.”

  “Hire him. Oh, ’fore I forget.” He looked at Sally. “I had a late breakfast with Louis Longmont. His chef fed me crap susies.”

  “Fed you what?” Sally said.

  “The chef set it on fire before he served me. I thought he’d lost his mind.”

  “You didn’t eat it, did you?” Pearlie asked.

  “Oh, yeah! It was pretty good. Real sweet.”

  “Crepes suzette,” Sally said.

  “That’s it,” Smoke said. “Say it again.”

  “You pronounce it ... krehp sew-zeht. You all try to say it.”

  They all tried. It sounded like three monkeys trying to master French.

  “I feel like a plumb idiot!” Charlie said.

  “What’re those damned nesters up to?” Tilden Franklin asked his foreman.

  “I can’t figure it,” Clint said. “They’ve all rode out and told the miners there wouldn’t be no trouble as long as the miners don’t spook their herds or trample their crops. They was firm, but in a nice way.”

  “Damn!” Tilden said. “I thought Jensen would go in shooting.”

  “So did I. You want us to maybe do a little night-ridin’?”

  “No. I want this to be all the nesters’ doing. Wait a minute. Yeah, I do want some night-riding. Send some of the boys out to Peyton’s place. Rustle a couple head and leave the butchered carcasses close to some miners’ camps. Peyton is hot-headed; he’ll go busting up in there and shoot or hang some of them. While we stand clear.”

  Clint smiled. “Tonight?”

  “Tonight.”

  Sheriff Monte Carson and his so-called deputies kept only a loose hand on the rowdy doings in Fontana. They broke up fistfights whenever they could get to them in time, but rarely interfered in a stand-up, face-to-face shootout. Mostly they saw to it that all the businesses — with the exception of Louis Longmont, Ed Jackson, and Lawyer Hunt Brook — paid into the Tilden kitty ... ten percent of the gross. And don’t hold none back. The deputies didn’t bother Doctor Colton Spalding either. They’d wisely decided that some of them just might need the Doc’s services sooner or later ... probably sooner.

  And, to make matters just a little worse, the town was attracting a small group of would-be gunslicks; young men who fancied themselves gunfighters and looked to make a reputation in Fontana. They strutted about with their pearl-handled Colts tied down low and their huge California spurs jangling. The young men usually dressed all in black, or in loudly colored silk shirts with pin-striped trousers tucked inside their polished boots. They bragged a lot about who they had faced down or shot, and did a lot of practicing outside the town limits. They were solid looking for trouble, and that trouble was waiting just around the corner for a lot of them.

  The town of Fontana was still growing, both in businesses and population. It now could boast four hotels and half a dozen rooming houses. Cafes had sprung up almost as fast as the saloons and the hurdy-gurdy girls who made their dubious living in those saloons ... and in the dirty cribs in the back rooms.

  The mother lode of the vein had been located, and stages were rolling into town twice a day, to carry the gold from the assay offices and to drop off their load of passengers. Tilden Franklin had built a bank, The Bank of Fontana, and was doing a swift business. Supply wagons rolled and rattled and rumbled twenty-four hours a day, bringing in much-needed items to the various businesses.

  To give the man a small amount of credit, Tilden Franklin had taken a hard look at His Town and quietly but firmly begun rearranging the business district. There were now boundaries beyond which certain types could not venture during specific hours. The red-light district lay at one end of Fontana, and just behind a long row of saloons and greasy-spoon cafes. Those ladies who worked in the red-light houses — in God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash — were not allowed past the invisible line separating the good people from the less desirable people during the time between seven in the morning and four in the afternoon. Heaven forbid that a “decent woman” should have to rub shoulders with ... that other kind of lady.

  Peyton had found the butchered carcass of two of his beeves close to a miner’s camp.

  “Take it easy,” Smoke said trying to calm the older man. “Those miners have hit a solid strike over there. No reason for them to have rustled any of your cows. Think about it, Peyton. Look here,” Smoke said, pointing. “These are horse tracks around these carcasses.”

  “So?” Peyton angrily demanded. “What the hell has that got to do with it?”

  “Those miners are riding mules, Peyton.”

  That news brought the farmer-rancher up short and silent. He walked over and sat down on a fallen log. He thought about that news for a moment.

  “We’re not actin’ like Tilden would like,” Peyton said softly. “So he’s tryin’ to prod us into doin’ something to blow the lid off. I was about to play right into his game, and he would have sent those so-called deputies up to arrest me, wouldn’t he, Smoke?”

  “Probably.” Smoke had told none of the others about the old gunfighters on their way in. Charlie had returned from his travels, all smiles and good news.

  The aging gunfighters would begin arriving at any time, trickling in alone or in pairs as they linked up on the trails and roads.

  “Go on home,” Smoke told the older man. “I’ll go see the miners.”

  Smoke watched the man mount up and leave. He swung into the saddle and rode up toward the miners’ camp. He hailed the camp and was told to come on in.

  Briefly Smoke explained, but he made no mention of Tilden Franklin.

  “Who would try to cause trouble, Smoke?” a burly miner asked.

  “I don’t know. But I just put the lid back on what might have been real trouble. You boys be careful from here on in. Tempers are frayed enough around here. The slightest thing could lit the fuse.”

  “We will. Smoke, you reckon Peyton and some of the others would mind if me and the boys pitched in and kind of helped around their places? You know ... we’re all pretty handy with tools ... maybe some repair work, such as that?”

  “I think it would be a hell of a nice move on your part.” Smoke grinned and the miners grinned back. “And it’s gonna irritate whoever it is trying to stir up trouble. I’ll tell the others to look for you. I bet y’all would like some home-cooked grub too, wouldn’t you?”

  That brought a round of cheers from the miners, many of whom had families far away.

  Smoke wheeled his horse and rode back down the mountain. Smoke the gunfighter had suddenly become Smoke the peacemaker.

  “Nothing,” Clint told Tilden. “Smoke made peace with the miners. He figured it all out somehow.”

  “What’s it going to take to prod those goddamned nesters into action?” Tilden asked. “I’m about out of ideas.”

  Clint didn’t like what he was about to suggest, but Clint rode for the brand. Right or wrong. “The Colby girl.”

  Although it had originally been Tilden’s idea, the more he thought about it, the less he liked it. Bother a good woman out West and a man was in serious trouble ... and it didn’t make a damn who you were or how much or how little you had.

  “Risky, Clint.” He met the man’s eyes. “You have a plan?”

  “Yes,” the foreman said, and stepped across that narrow chasm that separated good from evil, man from rabid beast.

  “How long will it take you to set it up?”

  “A few days. Them nesters got to be going into town for supplies pretty soon.”

  Tilden nodded his head. “Do it.”

  “You better get some sort of platform, Boss,” Pearlie told Smoke.

  “Platform? What are you talking about?”

  “Some of them old gunhands is pullin’ in. I swear to God there oughta be a hearse followin’ along behind ‘em.”

  Smoke stepped out of the barn just as Charlie was riding up from the Sugarloaf range.

  Smoke had never seen a more disreputable, dow
n-at-the-heels-looking bunch in all his life. Some of them looked like they’d be lucky to see another morning break clear.

  “See what I mean about that platform, Boss? I swear that them ol’ boys is gonna hurt themselves gettin’ off their horse.”

  Smoke had to smile. He was fondly recalling a bunch of Mountain Men who, at eighty, were as spry as many men half their age. “Don’t sell them short, Pearlie. I got a hunch they’re gonna fool us all.”

  “Hi, thar, Buttermilk!” Charlie called.

  “Aaa-yeeee!” the old man hollered. “You get uglier ever’ time I see you, Charlie.”

  “Talks funny too,” Pearlie said.

  “I seen now why he’s called Buttermilk.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s probably all he can eat. He don’t have any teeth!”

  18

  “That is The Apache Kid?” Sally said, speaking to Smoke. “I have heard stories about The Apache Kid ever since I arrived in the West. Smoke, he looks like he might topple over at any moment.”

  “That’s him,” Smoke said. “Preacher told me about him. And I’ll make you a bet right now that that old man can walk all day and all night, stop for a handful of berries and take a sip of water, and go another twenty-four hours.”

  “I ain’t dis-pootin’ your word, Boss,” Pearlie said. “But I’m gonna have to see it to believe it.”

  Smiling, Smoke bent down and picked up a small chunk of wood. “Apache!” he called.

  The old, buckskin-clad man turned and looked at Smoke.

  “A silver dollar says you can’t knock it out of the air.”

  “Toss ’er, boy!”

  Smoke tossed the chunk high into the air. With fifty-odd years of gunhandling in his past, Apache’s draw was as smooth and practiced as water over a fall. He fired six times. Six times the hardwood chunk was hit, before falling in slivers to the ground.