He headed back to the Double D.
Sally was sitting on the porch when Smoke rode back to the ranch compound. She looked for a moment at the way he sat his saddle and then stood up.
“What’s wrong?” Jeanne asked.
“I’m going to fix a packet of food for Smoke.”
“Is he going somewhere?” Toni asked.
“Yes,” Sally replied mysteriously, and walked into the house.
“How strange,” Jeanne remarked.
Toni watched as Smoke stepped down from the saddle and walked toward the house. “Maybe not,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“There is something quite different about Smoke. Look at him. He’s moving like some great predator cat. See the difference in him?”
Jeanne looked. “I do believe you’re right. There is a more, well, determined look about him.”
The sisters looked at each other and smiled. Toni said, “I think Mr. Clint Black is about to discover that he has angered the wrong man.”
None of the hands said anything to Smoke when he emerged from the house. There was a look about him that warned people away. He had changed clothes. He now wore earth tones that would blend in with his surroundings. He had selected a big rugged horse that was mountain bred, would not stand out, and who was a better sentry at night than a trained dog. Smoke had a packet of food, a small coffee pot, and a bedroll. He had put moccasins in the saddlebags. There was an extra rope on the saddle. He had shoved a Winchester .44-40 into the saddle boot and bandoleers of ammunition crisscrossed his chest with extra boxes in the saddlebags.
He had said his goodbyes to Sally while in the house. She knew her man and was stoic about their temporary parting.
When she had asked where he had been that morning, she knew even more what he was going to do when he replied, “Over in the valley, by the graves.”
He held her for a moment, kissed her, and was gone. Sally busied herself baking pies.
“You boys hold it down,” Smoke said to the hands that were gathered outside the barn. “I’ll be back when you see me.”
Smoke headed for Circle 45 range.
As the twins had suggested, Sheriff Harris Black got nothing out of the wounded raiders. Since no one was filing any charges, he could do nothing except let them go. Two of the raiders had died before reaching town and a third was not expected to live. Dr. Garrett’s little clinic was jammed to overflowing, with pallets on the floor.
“They’ll be more,” one of the deputies warned him. “This situation ain’t even built up a good head of steam yet.”
“I’m running out of medicines,” the Doctor complained.
“You better order some more,” the deputy told him. “’Cause when Smoke Jensen gets a gutful of this mess, he’ll come a-foggin’ like something out of Hell. Clint Black ain’t seen nothin’ yet. You mark my words, Doc.”
The Circle 45 rider felt the loop settle around him, the rope tighten, and he was jerked out of the saddle before he could holler. Not that yelling would have done any good, since he was miles from the ranch house and riding alone.
The wind was knocked from him as he hit the ground. He managed to roll and shake the loop. He got to his feet spitting mad and cussing and reaching for his gun. Out of the corner of his eyes he caught a blur of motion and turned just in time to receive a big leather-gloved fist right in his mouth. The blow knocked him on his butt and addled him for a few seconds. He crawled to his feet and a combination of lefts and rights flattened him, bloodying his mouth, busting his nose, and watering his eyes. The blows came so fast he still was not sure who was throwing them. But he had him a pretty good idea. The Circle 45 hand tried to make a fight of it, but he never had a chance to get set.
The would-be tough felt himself picked up and hurled into a stand of trees. His head impacted against a tree and his world turned black. When he awakened, he had the world’s worst headache, his face felt like someone had worked him over with a two-by-four, and to add insult to injury, he was hanging upside down from a tree limb.
Smoke Jensen was sitting on the ground, his back to a tree. He was chewing on a biscuit and staring at the puncher. The Circle 45 rider quickly decided the best thing he could do was to keep his mouth shut.
Smoke stared at him for several very long moments. He finished his biscuit, walked to his horse and took a drink from his canteen, returned to the tree, and sat down. “You have a home?” Smoke finally asked the upside-down man.
“Utah,” the puncher said. “I’d like to see it again someday. Sir,” he added.
Smoke reached down and pulled out a long-bladed knife. The bladder of the Circle 45 rider gave it up and a dark stain appeared on his jeans.
“How bad do you want to see Utah?” Smoke asked him.
“Real bad. Like I’d leave right now ifn I was able.”
“I ought to just go on and split you wide open and be done with it.”
“Oh, man!” the hired gun hollered. “Look…you cut me down and I’m gone. You won’t never see me again. That’s a promise, Mr. Jensen. Look here, I’ll level with you. Clint’s hirin’ more men. He’s payin’ money can’t nobody pass up. I’m tellin’ you the truth.”
Smoke stood up and walked over to the puncher. He cut him down and the man landed heavily. He lay on the ground and looked up at Smoke.
“You’ve got a bit of food in your saddlebags,” Smoke told him. “I’ve taken your pistols and left you your rifle. If you think it’s worth your life to ride back and collect what wages are due you, then do so. But I would advise against it. The best thing you can do is put some miles behind you.”
“I’m gone, Mr. Jensen. I swear on the Bible, I’m gone like the breeze.”
“Get up and get gone!”
Fifteen seconds later, the hand was in the saddle and riding. Montana would not see him again.
Smoke stayed on the fringe of Circle 45 range, whenever possible staying in timber and never skylining himself. The smell of food cooking drifted to him. He picketed his horse, slipped on moccasins. and taking the .44-40 from the boot, began stalking the source of the smells. He quietly walked to within a hundred feet of the camp. Four men sat drinking coffee and frying bacon. A pot of beans hung over the fire. Smoke injuned his way closer and smiled at the laxness of the men. They obviously believed that since they were on Circle 45 range they were in no danger. Rifles were in saddle boots and only one of the men was wearing a gun. The others had tossed their gun belts onto rumpled blankets. Smoke rose as silently as any Apache and stood for a moment, staring at the men. He knew one of them would spot him.
One did, his eyes taking in the rifle pointed right at him. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. “Morris,” he finally said. “Boys. Don’t none of you do nothin’ itchy.”
“What are you talkin’ about, Granville?”
“Smoke Jensen.”
“What about him?”
“He’s standin’ ’bout fifty feet behind you with a rifle in his hands.”
“Sit right where you are,” Smoke told the group. “Or die right where you are. The choice is yours.”
“We’re calm,” Granville said.
Smoke walked into the camp site and placed the muzzle of the .44-40 against the head of the only one who was armed. He reached down and took the man’s pistol. Smoke backed off a dozen feet and sat down. “Turn that bacon and stir those beans,” he told the group. “Then dish me up a plate. I’m hungry. We’ll talk while we eat and then you boys can saddle up and drift on out of the territory.”
“Huh?” Morris said.
Smoke thumbed back the hammer on the .44-40 and the Circle 45 hands tensed. “You ride or you die,” he said simply. “It’s that easy. I’m tired of this war. I’m tired of the likes of Clint Black. And I’m tired of the likes of men such as you. I don’t want to have to look at your ugly faces again.”
“You ain’t got no call to insult us,” one said.
Smoke smiled. “There is not
hing I could say about you that should insult you. You’re murderers, thieves, and God only knows what else. But your lives are about to take a turn for the better. I think you boys are about to see the light.”
“I don’t think you’d shoot an unarmed man,” one of them said.
“Then you’re a fool,” Smoke told him. “The only rules I play by are my own. I was raised by mountain men, boys. Preacher and Nighthawk and Cherokee Jack and Dupre and Powder Pete and Lobo, just to name a few. I put my first man in the grave long before I had to shave. I’ll shoot every damn one of you then sit amid your bodies while I eat your food and then I’ll leave you for the buzzards and the critters. And don’t you ever think for one second that I won’t. You crap and crud killed my men and killed young boys and tried to kill my wife and me. Put yourself in my boots and think about that.”
The four men were beginning to sweat as Smoke’s words sank in. The one called Granville was pale, his eyes shining with fear. He said, “I can’t talk for the others, but you let me, and I’ll drift. You’ll never see me again, Jensen.”
“I won’t,” the one called Morris said. He looked at Smoke and his lips moved in an evil smile. “I’ll hunt you down and kill you and then have my way with your wife. See how she likes a real man. What do you think about that, Jensen?”
Smoke shot him. The slug took the gunhand in the center of the chest and he was dead before he fell back on the ground.
“Dish up the food,” Smoke said. “And then you boys can saddle up and ride out of here.”
“You damn shore got that right,” Granville said.
19
“We’re short one hand,” Jud reported to Clint. “He should have been in a long time ago. And that ain’t all. Fatso rode out to the boys’ camp this afternoon to see if they needed anything, what with them hidin’ out after the jailbreak. The camp was deserted, except for Morris’s dead body.”
Clint came out of the chair. “What?”
“That’s right. He was shot right through the heart.” He held out the brass. “Forty-four-forty at close range. Didn’t none of those boys carry a forty-four-forty.”
“Jensen?”
“Has to be. Camp wasn’t churned up with boot prints. Just the prints of the boys and one set of moccasin tracks. And one hell of a big man wearin’ ’em.”
“He is actually on my range, attacking my people?” That anyone would be so bold as to openly declare war on Clint Black was astonishing to the man. “Well…I won’t have that. I will not tolerate it.”
“Boss, don’t order the boys out at night. That’s what Jensen wants.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’ll attack the house if you pull the men away.”
“One man will attack this house? Jud, you’re turning into an old woman. Jensen isn’t a fool. He’s just stupid. He’s up in the high country. Miles from here.”
Actually, Smoke was standing by the front porch, listening to every word. Since Clint hated dogs, and shot everyone he saw, there were no dogs around to sound the warning. The corral was too far away for the horses to act as sentries. Smoke had been busy around the Circle 45 headquarters, having more fun than a half a dozen schoolboys. And more fun should start at any moment.
A scream came from one of the outhouses behind the bunkhouse. Smoke smiled, thinking: let the fun begin.
“What the hell’s the matter over there?” Jud hollered.
“They’s a goddamn rattlesnake in the shifter!” a hand bellered.
“Well, shoot the damn thing,” Jud yelled. “Jesus! Act like a bunch of women sometimes.”
Jud stalked off the porch and stepped on a rake that had just been placed on the path, placed in a manner that was tantamount to sabotage.
The handle flew up and smacked the foreman right in the face, almost knocking him down. Clint ran off the porch to see about his friend and foreman. “You all right, Jud? Jesus, your nose is busted. Come on back to the porch. I’ll get a wet cloth.” He started hollering for the cook.
Smoke ran around to the back of the house where he had placed a jug of kerosene he’d swiped from Clint’s storeroom. He poured the kerosene all over the back porch and waited until it soaked into the dry boards.
A Circle 45 hand started hollering for someone to let him out of the outhouse, the door was jammed. It sure was. Just as soon as the hand had stepped inside and closed the door, Smoke had wedged a stick in tight.
Before leaving the house, Smoke had found a long string of old firecrackers someone had left behind. He had taken them along. He lit a match, started the porch burning from underneath and slipped to the bunkhouse. He lit the fuse to the firecrackers and tossed them through an open window. Then he decided he’d better get the hell gone from that immediate area.
“Let me out of this damn crapper!” the hired gun hollered.
“Fire!” another yelled.
The fuse burned down to the firecrackers and pandemonium took over as what appeared to be an attack on the bunkhouse opened up. The hand trapped in the outhouse was rocking the entire structure back and forth in his frantic attempts to get out. He turned it over. Backwards.
The hands in the bunkhouse began shooting all over the place at imaginary foes.
When the other hands reached the water barrels, they were all empty. Smoke had cut holes in them with his knife. Everybody began using blankets and coats and brooms to beat out the fire which by now was threatening the wooden part of the house.
Smoke was still laughing when he reached his well-chosen and hidden little camp.
“The sorry son actually was here!” Clint exclaimed. Come the dawning, he had looked at the few firecrackers that had not exploded in the bunkhouse, and at the bullet holes caused by nervous hired guns. Stared at the wedge in the door of the outhouse—the hand had finally succeeded in kicking out the bottom of the crapper. Clint had found the jug of kerosene, and looked at the cause of the water barrels being empty. “He violated my property, almost burned down my house, and sabotaged the water barrels. I can’t believe it.”
“It’s almost like he was playin’ a joke,” Fatso Ross said. “Like he was havin’ fun with us.” Fatso looked at Jud’s swollen face where the rake handle had popped him. “But I don’t ’magine it was much of a joke, right, Jud?”
“I get that bastard in gunsights, the joke’ll be on him,” the foreman said.
For once it was Clint who had the level head. “We don’t strike at the Double D. Not yet. We don’t cause any trouble in town. Not yet. I want five men around the house at all times, the rest of you fan out, during the daylight hours only, and start searching my spread. Ride in pairs. No lone-wolfing it. The man is too dangerous for that. Take off. The offer still stands: five thousand dollars to the man who kills Smoke Jensen.”
Smoke had risen before dawn and rode back to Double D range. He stripped the saddle from his horse and hid it, then wrote a short note to Sally, tying it in the mane. He slapped the horse on the rump, knowing it would head straight for the corral. He took his sack of food and his other gear, including the ropes, and headed back to his little camp, deep in Circle 45 territory.
Longman and Steve Tucker were riding together. Wyoming could not have produced any sorrier pair than these two. Both were wanted in at least five states and two territories. And both of them were thinking about that five thousand dollar bounty that Clint had placed on the head of Smoke Jensen. And they were not watching their backtrail.
Two seconds after they had passed along the narrow trail, Smoke stepped out and fireballed a fist-sized rock, then ducked back into the brush and slipped up the side of the trail. The stone hit Longman on the back of the head and knocked him slap out of the saddle and unconscious on the rocky ground. If he had not been wearing a hat, the blow might have killed him, which was what Smoke had in mind.
“What the hell…?” Steve said, turning in the saddle at the sound of his buddy hitting the ground. There had been no shot and the rock lay among other stones on the
trail. Steve couldn’t figure out what had happened. He swung down from the saddle and knelt by his friend. Steve felt a blinding flash of pain and then he was stretched out beside his friend.
Smoke peeled them both down to their long-handles and took their clothing, boots, guns, and horses. They were a good ten miles from the bunkhouse and barefooted. It was going to be a long and painful hike back. Smoke threw the clothing away several miles from the still-unconscious men and unsaddled the horses, turning them loose.
He slipped back into the timber and brush.
The men of the Circle 45 hunted all that day for Smoke. The more fortunate of the hunters could not find a trace of him. Longman and Tucker staggered into the bunkhouse late that afternoon, their feet badly bruised and bleeding. Longman was seeing double and very nearly unable to speak. Bankston, Nelson, and Clements had not shown up by late afternoon.
“You better find them men ’fore dark,” Bronco Ford told Clint. The gunman was not afraid of Smoke, but he did have a lot of respect for him. “You send search parties out after dark and none of ’em will come back. Smoke Jensen’s like a puma in the woods.”
“If I want your opinion,” Clint told the man, “I’ll ask for it.”
Bronco shrugged his shoulders and walked off.
Bankston had become separated from his riding partner and was now tied to a tree, his own rope wound around him from ankles to neck and pulled tight. He was to spend a very uncomfortable night. Nelson and Clements were tied in the saddle, their hands behind their back, their horses wandering in a roundabout way back to the ranch. Smoke had gagged the men before tying them.
“There they are!” Grub Carson shouted, as the horses came ambling into the area. The gunslicks were untied and lowered to the ground. Neither man could feel anything in his hands.
The gags out of their mouths, Nelson croaked, “Man’s like a damn ghost. He come out of nowhere. There wasn’t no brush where we was. No place for him to hide. He’s worser than a damn Apache.”
Absaroka Ambush (first Mt Man)/Courage Of The Mt Man Page 41