Matt Jensen, The Last Mountain Man Savage Territory

by William W. Johnstone

  “Yes,” Matt said. Touching the brim of his hat, he smiled at Cynthia and Hendel, then walked over to the desk and signed the register.

  After Matt checked into the hotel, he went over to the Sundown Corral to check on his horse.

  “Yes, Mr. Jensen, your horse arrived four days ago,” the stable keeper said. “I must say, he is as fine an animal as has ever boarded with us.”

  “Yes, thank you, Spirit has been a very good horse,” Matt said.

  Matt went back into the stall area. When Spirit saw him, he began nodding his head and pawing at the ground.

  “Hello, old boy,” Matt said, walking up to the stall. Spirit put his head down and let Matt pet him and pull on his ears. This was Matt’s second horse named Spirit, and this one was so much like his first mount of the same name that he could almost believe that the “spirit” of Spirit One had somehow become a part of Spirit Two.

  “Sorry I’ve been gone so long,” Matt said. “But as soon as I get my business taken care of here, we’ll do some riding together.”

  Walking back up front, Matt approached the liveryman. “Do I owe you anything?”

  “Not yet, you don’t,” the liveryman replied. “The fella who arranged this for you has it all paid up for another week.”

  “Good, I expect we’ll be here for at least another week, and perhaps longer. Thanks for looking out for him for me.”

  “My pleasure, Mr. Jensen. My pleasure.”

  When Matt reached the building the sheriff had pointed out as the one Marcus was using to build his brewery, he saw that the front door was open. Matt stopped at the door, but didn’t go inside.

  “Hello?” he called.

  Not getting an answer, he stepped on into the building and called again.

  “Hello?”

  The inside was in shadows, poorly illuminated by the open door, a few open windows, and the bars of sunlight that streamed in through the cracks between the boards. Matt saw someone working on a large vat, and there was enough similarity in appearance to Lee that Matt knew immediately that he had found the right man.

  “Are you Andrew Marcus?”

  “Hand me that spanner, would you, mister?” the man replied, pointing to a wrench.

  Matt picked up the wrench and handed it to him.

  “Now, when I turn this, what I want you to do is look underneath this vat and see if it closes off the drain.”

  “All right,” Matt said.

  The man began turning the nut and Matt looked underneath the vat. He saw the drain close.

  “Did that close it down?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, good, I’ve been working on that all morning. Thanks for your help.”

  Matt chuckled. “I didn’t do a whole lot,” he said.

  “Sure you did. I needed another pair of eyes and you came along at the right time.” Marcus picked up a towel and began wiping his hands. “You got my name right, I’m Marcus. Who are you, and what can I do for you?” he asked.

  “My name is Matt Jensen, Mr. Marcus, and I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

  “Bad news? Wait a minute, are you tellin’ me there’s some kind of law says I can’t open a brewery here? Because if there is, it must be a new law. I read the law and all the statutes pertaining to brewing, and I didn’t see anything that says I can’t do it.”

  “No, it’s not about that, it has nothing to do with the brewery. It’s about Lee, your brother.”

  “Damn,” Marcus said. “I knew it. He’s in trouble with that mine he bought, isn’t he? I told him he was a fool for getting mixed up in something like that.”

  “No, sir, I wish that was the worst of it,” Matt said. He took a deep breath. “The truth is, Mr. Marcus, your brother is dead.”

  Marcus took a quick, surprised breath of air. “What?” he asked, his voice considerably softer now. He took a step back and put his hand on the side of the vat. “Did you—did you say Lee is dead?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”

  “How did he die?”

  “He was killed in a gunfight.”

  “Lee? Killed in a gunfight? Mister, are you sure we are talking about the same man? Lee might get himself into a fistfight, maybe even a brawl, but he would never get into a gunfight.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Marcus. I am talking about your brother,” Matt said. “Though I would give anything in the world if it wasn’t true.”

  Andy walked over to sit down on the bottom step of a stairway that led to a platform that stretched out over the three vats.

  “When did it happen?”

  “Almost a month ago now,” Matt said.

  “Damn. That means he’s already been buried. Here I’ve been so busy trying to get this brewery started that I didn’t even know about it. And I didn’t know about it because I was too damn selfish. Hell, I wasn’t even there for his funeral.”

  “I went to St. Louis to find you,” Matt said. “Lee thought that’s where you were.”

  “I’m sorry about that. I mean about you goin’ to all that trouble and me not even bein’ there,” Marcus said. “But the truth is, Mr. Jensen, Lee didn’t know where I was, because I didn’t write to tell him I had left St. Louis. You see, I had sort of hoped I would have this brewery going before I had to tell him anything about it. Then I was going to ask him to give up that worthless mine of his and come join me. I wasn’t even goin’ to charge him anything, just take him on as a full partner.” Andy sighed. “But it is too late for all that now.”

  “Lee left something for you,” Matt said. Opening his bag, he took out an envelope and handed it to Marcus.

  “What is it?” Marcus said. Opening the envelope, Marcus looked inside, gasped, then looked up at Matt. “What the hell? This is money!” he said.

  “Yes. Exactly two thousand dollars, in fact.”

  Although Lee had told Matt to use some of the money to offset his traveling expenses, Matt had not used any of it, preferring to keep the entire two thousand dollars together.

  “My God! You’re tellin’ me that there is two thousand dollars here and it came from Lee?”

  “Yes,” Matt said. “That is exactly what I am telling you.”

  “How in the world did Lee ever come up with that much money?”

  “It turns out you were wrong about the mine, Mr. Marcus,” Matt said. “The mine paid well for him.”

  “I’ll be damn. And all this time I’ve been mad at whoever sold it to him. I wish I could meet that fella now, so I could apologize.”

  Matt smiled. “Well, Mr. Marcus, you just met him,” he said.

  “Wait a minute. You? You are the one who sold my brother the mine?”

  “I am,” Matt said. “Oh, and by the way, the silver mine belongs to you now.” Again, Matt reached into the bag and pulled out a sheet of paper. “I’ve had all the paperwork drawn up transferring ownership to you.”

  “Mister, I’d like to shake your hand,” Marcus said. “You may well be the most honest man I’ve ever met. You could have kept the money, and the mine, and I would have never known anything about it. So the mine paid off, huh?”

  “Yes. Lee had to work it, and I won’t tease you, it was hard work. But in the end, the mine did pay off for your brother.”

  Marcus ran his hand across his chin. “Oh, my. Well, now, that does present me with something of a quandary. I need to ask myself, should I pull up stakes here and go up to Colorado to work the mine? After all, it has proven itself. Or, should I stay here and build the brewery?” He held up the envelope containing the two thousand dollars. “This is all the money I need to finish.”

  “I intend to stay here for a few more days,” Matt said. “Let me know what you decide. If you decide to sell out here and go up to Denver, we can go up together.”

  “You know the mine, do you think I should do that? Leave here and go up there, I mean.”

  Matt shook his head. “No, sir, Mr. Marcus, it’s not my place to tell you. This is a decision you are going t
o have to make on your own.”

  “Yeah,” Marcus said. “Yeah, I guess you are right about that. All right, I’ll give it some thought over the next couple of days.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Even as Matt was visiting with Andrew Marcus, Pogue Willis and Billy Meechum were riding into town. Their attention was drawn to a group of people standing in front of a store identified by the red-painted sign on the false front as SIKES’ HARDWARE STORE. The people appeared to be looking at something that was in the front window.

  “Look at all them people standin’ in front of that store over there,” Meechum said. “What is it do you reckon they are lookin’ at?”

  “I don’t know,” Willis answered. “Why don’t we just ride over that way and take a look?”

  Willis and Meechum steered their horses across the street, then stopped just behind the people who were gathered in front of the store.

  What they saw was three coffins, the bottom halves of which were closed, the upper halves open. The coffins, thus arrayed, displayed the bodies of Burt Philbin, Deermont Cantrell, and Abe Oliver. All three men were wearing jackets and ties, though Meechum knew for a fact that none of them owned a jacket or a tie—and he was almost certain that none of them had ever even worn a jacket or tie.

  Instead of the pallor of death, the three men showed color in their faces. In fact, it was far too much color, very obviously artificially applied by the undertaker.

  “Damn,” Meechum said. “It’s Burt, Deermont, and Abe.”

  “I can see that,” Willis said. “And if I couldn’t, that damn sign there would tell me.”

  The sign Willis spoke of was painted on a square board that was standing on a tripod alongside the three coffins.

  Burt Philbin

  Deermont Oliver

  Andy Cantrell

  Robbers Beware!

  These three outlaws were killed by Matt Jensen when they tried to hold up the Sun Valley stage.

  “Damn, look at that. They got the names all wrong,” Meechm said. “They got Cantrell and Oliver’s names all mixed up. And it’s Abe, not Andy. We ought to do something.”

  “Do something? What do you mean, do something?”

  Meechum pointed to the sign in the window. “That,” he said. “We ought to at least tell ’em they got the names wrong.”

  “Right,” Willis said. “And while you are at it, you can tell them that we was in on the same robbery.”

  “What? Well, no, I wouldn’t do anything like that,” Meechum said. He thought for a moment. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah, I guess I see what you mean. But it don’t seem right that they got the names all wrong.”

  “What difference does it make whether they got the names wrong or not?” Willis asked. “They’re dead and if you get the names right, they ain’t goin’ to be any less dead, are they?”

  Meechum thought for a moment, then he chuckled. “No,” he said. I don’t reckon they will be any less dead.”

  “Then why don’t you quit worryin’ about it and let’s go get us a beer,” Willis said.

  A long board of wooden pegs nailed along one wall of the Dry Gulch Saloon stood about six feet above the floor and provided a rack for hats and coats. A card game was in progress near the back. At one of the front tables, there was some earnest conversation. Three men stood at the bar, each complete within himself, concentrating only on his drink and private thoughts. A soiled dove, near the end of her professional effectiveness, overweight, with bad teeth and wild, unkempt hair, stood at the far end. She smiled at Willis and Meechum when they came in, but getting no encouragement, stayed put.

  “What’ll it be, gents?” the bartender asked, making a swipe across the bar with a sour-smelling cloth.

  “Beer,” Willis said.

  “The same,” Meechum added.

  The bartender drew two mugs of beer, then sat them in front of Willis and Meechum. “I think you’ll like this beer, it’s made local.”

  “What do you mean, made local?”

  “Why, we got us a beer man right here in this town,” the bartender said. “A master brewer come here from St. Louis. You won’t get no better beer anywhere in the country than this.”

  “Beer is beer,” Willis said, taking a swallow.

  “You boys just ridin’ through?” he asked.

  Willis stared back at him, but didn’t answer.

  “The reason I asked is, you might not know ’bout some of the excitement goin’ on.”

  “What excitement?” Meechum asked.

  “Stagecoach robbery excitement,” the bartender replied. He chuckled, “That is, some fellers tried to rob the stagecoach, only all they got for it was killed.”

  “Yes, we saw the bodies in the front of the hardware store,” Meechum said. “Do the folks in this town put ever’ dead body you got on display like that?”

  “No, nothin’ like that,” the bartender answered. “But you can’t blame Mr. Prufrock none. You see, he has his undertakin’ business in the back of the Sikes hardware store—Mr. Sikes, he rents the space out. And these three galoots, bein’ outlaws and all, don’t have nobody payin’ to bury ’em except the town, so Prufrock puts ’em on display like that to advertise his business.”

  “Tell me, what was them fellas lookin’ to get by robbin’ the stagecoach?” Willis asked. “Was the coach really carryin’ money?”

  “I reckon the passengers was carryin’ money,” the bartender said. “Don’t know if the coach was.”

  “It was carryin’ some money, but it wasn’t carryin’ near as much as it’ll be carryin’ next week,” one of the men down at the end of the bar said.

  Willis took a swallow of his beer, then looked toward the man who had just spoken.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “’Cause, there’s a fella in town now by the name of Bixby. Jay Peerless Bixby. You ever heard of him?”

  “Can’t say as I have.”

  “Well, he’s one rich son of a bitch from what I hear.”

  “Bartender, I see my friend here’s mug is empty. Give him another beer,” Willis said, pointing to the talkative man at the end of the bar.

  “Be glad to,” the bartender said. He retrieved the mug, filled it, then replaced it. “There you go, Mr. Deckert.”

  Deckert held the full mug up toward Willis and Meechum, as if toasting them.

  “I thank you, Mister—”

  “Tell me more about this man Jay Peerless Bixby,” Willis said, without supplying his own name.

  “Oh, he’s a rich one all right,” Deckert said. “He’s come out here to buy ranch land and they say he wants to own the biggest ranch in the entire territory. Anyway, to do that he’s going to have to have a lot of money transferred.”

  “How much money is a lot of money?”

  Willis asked the question over the brim of his mug as he took another swallow.

  “A lot,” Deckert answered. “In fact, some folks say it’ll be as much as forty, maybe fifty thousand dollars, and it’ll be comin’ into town by stagecoach.”

  “When?”

  “Next week sometime, from what I hear. You seem uncommon interested in all this,” Deckert said.

  Willis laughed. “Maybe I’m plannin’ to hold up the stagecoach.”

  “Yeah? Well if you do, I hope you have better luck than them three boys that just tried it.”

  “They was just particular unlucky is all,” the bartender said. “They happened to try and rob the particular coach Matt Jensen was ridin’ on.”

  “You got that right,” Deckert said. “I know there was only one of him and three of the robbers—”

  “Five if you count the two that got away,” the bartender said, interrupting Deckert in mid-sentence.

  “Five then,” Deckert corrected. “But here’s the point I was gettin’ at. They was five stagecoach robbers and only one of Matt Jensen, which means the robbers was outnumbered.” He laughed.

  For a second or two, neither the bartender nor an
yone else at the bar reacted.

  “Don’t you get it?” Deckert said. “They’s only one of Matt Jensen and they’s three—maybe more of the robbers, but I said they was outnumbered.”

  There was still no reaction.

  “Because he’s so good,” Deckert explained in an exasperated tone of voice.

  “Oh, I get it now,” the bartender said, and he laughed out loud.

  “So you see, friend, if you really are plannin’ on holdin’ up the coach, you might want to think about it again, lessen you run into this here Jensen fella.”

  “There you go, friend, you just talked me right out of it,” Willis said, laughing and holding up his beer.

  The others in the saloon laughed as well.

  When the Dry Gulch closed its doors for the night, Willis and Meechum, not having enough money to waste on a hotel room, rode just outside of town where they bedded down in an arroyo beneath the huge dark slab of the McDowell Mountains.

  “We goin’ to try and rob that stagecoach, are we, Willis?” Meechum asked.

  Willis shook his head. “No, I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Good, ’cause to tell you the truth, I wasn’t lookin’ forward to something like that again. I think waitin’ till the money gets here, then robbin’ the bank that it’s put into, will be a lot better.”

  “We ain’t goin’ to do that either.”

  “What do you mean we ain’t goin’ to do that? Ain’t that what we come here for?”

  “We come here to get money the best way we can,” Willis said. He smiled. “We’ll just wait around until this here Bixby fella takes the money out of the bank. It’ll be a lot easier takin’ the money from him than it would be robbin’ a bank.”

  A big smile spread across Meechum’s face.

  “Yeah!” he said. “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

  “So, all we got to do is spend a week or so here without gettin’ into any kind of trouble.”

  After Meechum spread out his blanket, he stepped a few feet away to relieve himself. As he stood there, urinating, he happened to look up just in time to see a falling star. Long ago, his pa had once told him that every time you see a falling star, it meant someone was about to die, and he wondered if it was an omen for his own fate.