Strike of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “Thank you. That was very thoughtful of you. Uh, does my uncle have any employees? The reason I ask is because I was told there are three hundred and twenty-five cattle there and I’m concerned they haven’t been looked after.”

  “No, there aren’t any full-time employees there,” Smoke said. “The cattle pretty much look after themselves until roundup time, or until you take them to market. Then Mr. Puddle would put on a couple hands.”

  “I see. Yes, I would like to ride out to the ranch.”

  “All right. I’ll take you out to see it, then I want you to come over to my house for dinner tonight. You can even spend the night with us, and get an early start tomorrow to have a close look at Carro de Bancada.”

  “Carro de Bancada,” Malcolm said. “Ha! I’m a landowner. And not just a landowner. I actually own a ranch. I can’t wait to tell all my friends back in Brooklyn.”

  “Are those my cattle?” Malcolm asked, looking out over a field they were riding by. Several cattle were grazing.

  “No, those cows belong to the Frenchman.”

  “The Frenchman?”

  “That’s what everyone calls him. He likes to call himself Colonel. Colonel Lucien Garneau.”

  “He is the one who wants to buy the ranch, isn’t he? Mr. Norton told me about him.”

  “I expect he will make an offer,” Smoke said. “He’s bought out several ranchers already.”

  “I take it Uncle Humboldt wasn’t interested in selling to him?”

  “No, he wasn’t. Well, there it is,” Smoke said. “That’s the gate into your place.”

  It had taken Smoke and Malcolm a little over half an hour of leisurely riding to reach the ranch. The gate Smoke pointed to made an arch over the road. A sign hung from the top of the arch, reading CARRO DE BANCADA. Positioned on top of the arch was a saddle, complete with hanging stirrups.

  From the arch the road ran about a quarter mile up to the house, which was a rather modest, single story dwelling. Smoke identified the three other buildings as a barn, a machine shed, and a smokehouse.

  “I know you have at least three or four cured hams in there, and a couple sides of bacon. And you’ve got a milk cow and a garden that’s coming along fine.”

  “That’s good to know,” Malcolm said. “I guess I’ll have to learn to cook.”

  “Nothing to it,” Smoke said. “You just light a fire, then heat things up.”

  They dismounted in front of the house.

  “Where was my uncle killed?”

  “He was over there, behind the corral fence,” Smoke said. “He put up quite a fight. There were four who came for him, and he held them off for quite a while.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Your uncle was certain they were working for the Frenchman, but of course, Garneau has denied any connection to it. Since there’s no way of connecting the men to him, the official word is they were outlaws come to rob your uncle.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I don’t know,” Smoke admitted. “One of them, a man named Noble, had a record of doing just that—hitting remote ranches, killing everyone there, and then robbing them. It’s possible, I guess.”

  “But you think it was the Frenchman, don’t you?”

  “Your uncle thought that,” Smoke said without being anymore specific in his reply. “What do you say we go on over to Sugarloaf now? I’m getting hungry, and my wife sure can cook.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Welcome to Sugarloaf,” Sally said after Smoke took Malcolm to the ranch and made the introduction. “Tell me, Mr. Puddle, what do you think of Colorado, so far?”

  “Please, call me Malcolm. I love Colorado so far. The mountains are quite impressive and beautiful.”

  “They are a bit overwhelming, aren’t they? I remember my impression of them the first time I came here.”

  “You mean you aren’t from Colorado?”

  Sally laughed. “Heavens no. I’m not sure anyone is actually from Colorado. But once I got here I became so attached this is truly my home now, and Boston seems just like a place I have visited. Of course, I’ve visited New York as well, so I know what a tremendous difference it is for you.”

  “Monte told me about Malcolm’s welcoming committee at the depot,” Smoke said.

  “Welcoming committee?” Sally asked.

  “A couple of the Frenchman’s cowboys decided to roust him. One of them took his hat and dared him to take it back.”

  “Oh, that’s awful.”

  Smoke laughed. “Not so awful. Malcolm took it back.” Smoke looked back at Malcolm. “Monte said you pack quite a punch.”

  “I was a professional fighter for a while,” Malcolm said.

  “Ha! I thought it might be something like that. It’s good to be able to take care of yourself, but be careful where and how you use that skill. No matter how good you are with your fists, they’re no match for a gun. And I’m sure you have noticed just about everyone out here carries a gun.”

  “Yes, I have noticed. But I’m not good with a gun.” Malcolm chuckled. “The truth is, I’ve never even fired one.”

  “We’ll take care of that soon enough.” Smoke turned to Sally. “Have we got anything to feed our guest?”

  “Smoke, have I ever turned anyone away?” Sally replied.

  Smoke smiled. “No, you haven’t. And, shamelessly, I have taken advantage of that.”

  “Shamelessly,” Sally said, returning Smoke’s smile.

  “What’s for supper?”

  “How about fried ham? And I’ll fry some potatoes and scramble some eggs in with them.”

  “And biscuits?” Smoke asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Long Trek

  Templeton knocked on the door of the big house and heard Garneau call from inside.

  “Entrez.”

  Templeton went inside. He saw that Garneau had a large piece of paper spread out on the dining room table.

  “Come, I want you to see this,” Garneau invited. A very detailed map had been drawn on newsprint he had gotten from the Big Rock Journal.

  “I wondered what you wanted with that big piece of paper,” Templeton said.

  “Here,” Garneau said, pointing at the map, “is Sugarloaf. And here is Long Trek. Here is Carro de Bancada.”

  “Yeah, Puddle’s nephew has come to take it. But I’ll bet you can buy him out cheap. He’s some Eastern dude who doesn’t know a thing about ranching.”

  “That may be true,” Garneau said. “But one thing I learned at St. Cyr is a good officer is always prepared for any contingency. Suppose he doesn’t want to sell to me?”

  “I don’t think it would take much to convince him to sell.”

  “I am told he has befriended Smoke Jensen.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard as well,” Templeton said.

  “Smoke Jensen is a formidable adversary. After all, he killed Willard, the three men who came to join us, the two men you set to ambush him, and Nixon, Curtis, and Noble.”

  “He is just one man.”

  “Just one man who has already dispatched nine men. Also, he is quite obviously a leader. What if he gathers the other paysans into an organized resistance?

  “What would he have if he did do that? They are nothing but a bunch of pig farmers and small ranchers who couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag.”

  “I studied your Civil War while I was at St. Cyr. Most of both armies were made up of farmers, ranchers, merchants, and mechanics. As Euripides once said, ‘Ten men wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.’ I wouldn’t dismiss them so readily.”

  “All right. So what should we do?”

  “We are going to form an army,” Garneau said. “Turn out every man. I will speak with them.”

  Dressed in the uniform of a French colonel of cavalry, Garneau stood before every man who worked for him, cowboys and the gunmen Templeton had recruited. “Starting today, I am doubling the salary o
f everyone who works for me.”

  The men cheered and patted each on the shoulders.

  Garneau let them express their joy for a moment, then he held his hands up to call for quiet. “You will earn that money.”

  The cheering stopped, and the men looked at him in curiosity.

  “You may be wondering about the clothes I am wearing. This”—he took himself in with a small sweep of his hand, “is the uniform of a colonel of cavalry. I fought, honorably, in the Franco-Prussian War, and I am quite comfortable with command. You may look at me as your commanding officer because, starting today, we are going to become an army.”

  “We’re goin’ to become what?” Curly Roper asked.

  “An army,” Garneau said. “And an army demands discipline. Let us begin by lining up in formation. Capitaine Templeton, you will be my second in command.”

  “Yes, sir,” Templeton said with a big smile.

  “Briggs, Mathis, Carr, you three will be my sergeants. The rest of you men will take your orders from them, as they will take their orders from me.”

  “Why are you doin’ this, Colonel?” Hoyt Miller asked.

  “Because, Mr. Miller, I am trying to build something here, something grand and unique. I am building a cattle empire, and like any empire, we have made enemies and, no doubt, we will make more enemies in the future. In addition, this is not the kind of empire that can survive merely by staying in place. We must grow, and the only way we can grow is if we convince the small ranchers in the valley to sell out to me. Quite frankly, gentlemen, we must convince them to sell at a price that is right for me. That is going to take some persuasion, the kind of persuasion that must be backed by use of arms, if necessary.”

  “Colonel, it sounds to me like you are talking about a war, here,” Miller said. “I didn’t sign on to go to war. If I wanted to do that, I’d join the army and go fight the Injuns.”

  “Miller, do you know how much a private makes in the army?” Templeton asked.

  “I ain’t got no idea,” Miller replied.

  “Sir,” Garneau said.

  “What?” Miller asked.

  “When you speak to Capitaine Templeton, or to me, you will say sir.”

  “Thank you, Colonel,” Templeton said. “Miller, for your information, a private in the army makes thirteen dollars a month. Most cowboys work for twenty dollars a month and found. Because of the colonel’s generous raise today, you will be getting sixty dollars a month. You don’t have to pay for where you sleep at night, and you don’t have to pay for your food. That means you have sixty dollars you can use any way you want.”

  “I’m going to be spending my money on the girls at the Brown Dirt,” someone said, and the others laughed.

  “You’ll be making four and a half times more money working for the Long Trek than you would make in the army. Do you really want to go join the army?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  Over the next several days, the ranch was alive with the sound of repeated gunfire, the echoes rolling back from the nearby mountains to double the intensity. Someone not aware of what it was, might have thought a battle was taking place, when in fact, it was nothing of the sort. Templeton stood beside Garneau as they watched their “army” train. The Frenchman had organized his men into three squads of nine, plus the “sergeants” he had put in command of each squad. Briggs, Mathis, and Carr were skilled gunmen, and they were conducting shooting exercises for the other men.

  “How do you think they are doing?” Garneau asked.

  “Some are doing better than others,” Templeton replied.

  “Yes, that is always the case when any army is trained.”

  “Colonel, I have a suggestion. That is, if you care to hear it.”

  “I would be a poor commander indeed if I refused to listen to a suggestion from my second in command.”

  “Jensen has two men who work for him, and one of them is almost as good with a gun as Jensen is. Fact is, he used to be a gunman himself. The other one isn’t quite as good, but he is good enough that, if they joined Jensen, it could cause us some trouble. I think we should take care of them before we start anything.”

  “Who are these men?”

  “Pearlie, and Cal Wood.”

  “Why haven’t I heard of them? I’ve been here for over six months and I’ve never heard of either one of them. Shouldn’t I have heard of them by now?”

  “They’ve spent near on to a year now in Denver. It seems Jensen has started a slaughterhouse there, and Pearlie and Cal Wood are running it.”

  “If they are in Denver, then they are of no concern to us,” Garneau said.

  Templeton shook his head. “No, sir, that’s not quite true. If they ever get the idea Jensen is in trouble, they’ll be back here faster than a duck can jump on a June bug.”

  “How do you propose to take care of them?”

  “I think we should send someone to Denver,” Templeton said.

  “Who do you suggest? If they are as good as you say they are I don’t think any of our men would be a match for them, except possibly Mathis, Briggs, or Carr. And I don’t want to send them right now. They are too valuable in training the others.”

  “If we put out a reward on Jensen’s men, we won’t have to send any of our men. Someone out there will do it for us.”

  “How much of a reward do you think I should post?”

  “A thousand dollars ought to do it.”

  “And how am I to do this? I can’t very well go to the newspaper office and have them print up reward posters for me.”

  “You won’t need to,” Templeton said. “All we have to do is put out the word. It’ll spread all over, believe me.”

  “Very well. Put out the word that I will pay one thousand dollars to anyone who kills Cal Wood and Pearlie . . . Pearlie what? What is his last name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I can’t put out a reward on someone if I don’t know who we are looking for, can I?”

  “Let me ask you this, Colonel. How many men do you think are named Pearlie?”

  Garneau laughed.

  “If you’ve got no objection to it, I’ll start puttin’ out the word.”

  “By all means, put out the word.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Sugarloaf

  Long Trek wasn’t the only place where training was taking place.

  It was going on at Sugarloaf as well, though there were only three people participating in the exercise, compared to the thirty-two men undergoing military instruction at Long Trek. Smoke and Sally were the trainers. Malcolm Puddle was the one being trained.

  Smoke handed Malcolm a loaded pistol, then pointed to one of several tin cans sitting on a fence. “See if you can hit that can.”

  Malcolm raised the pistol then closed one eye and squinted down the barrel.

  “No, don’t raise your pistol to eye level and try to aim it,” Smoke said. “In a fight, you won’t have time to do that.”

  “How am I supposed to aim, if I don’t sight down the barrel?” Malcolm asked.

  “Do it kinesthetically,” Sally suggested.

  “I beg your pardon. Do it how?”

  “You are a boxer, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you throw a punch, do you raise your fist to your eyes and aim it?”

  Malcolm laughed. “No.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Well, I just sort of feel where the . . . oh! I think I see what you are talking about. You’re saying I should just sense where I’m shooting.”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s not the same thing as hitting someone with your fists.”

  Smoke laughed. “Sure it is. It turns out that I’ve been shooting kinesthetically all along, but I didn’t know it until Sally told me that’s what I was doing.”

  “But can you really hit something that way?”

  “Watch.” Sally nodded at Smoke, and he turned his back. She picked up two bottles and gave one
to Malcolm, while keeping the other. Then, silently, she indicated to Malcolm he should toss the bottle into the air. They launched both bottles at the same time.

  “Now, Smoke,” Sally said calmly.

  Faster than Malcolm would have believed possible, Smoke whirled around, drawing his pistol as he did so. He shot twice, the bang of the two shots so close together the young man would have thought he fired only once, had not both bottles been broken.

  “Wow, kinesthetically,” Malcolm said.

  “Does that answer your question as to whether you can actually hit anything that way?” Sally asked.

  “Lord,” Malcolm said. “If everyone out here can shoot like that, I would be an idiot to actually get into a gunfight with anyone.”

  “Trust me, not everyone can shoot like my Smoke,” Sally said proudly.

  “Try it,” Smoke said.

  Malcolm fired, but the tin cans stayed in place.

  “It’s not hard.” Sally fired from her waist, knocking one of the tin cans off the fence.

  “I thought you said everyone couldn’t shoot like that.”

  “Sally’s just showing off,” Smoke said. “But she’s a better shot than ninety-nine percent of the people you will meet out here.”

  “I thought you said you were from Boston.”

  “I am.”

  “Well, I know you didn’t learn to shoot like that in Boston.”

  “I didn’t. I came out here to teach school. I didn’t learn to shoot like that until Smoke taught me.”

  “You taught her?”

  “I did.”

  Malcolm smiled. “You must be a good teacher. Maybe there is hope for me.” He fired again, and missed again.

  “Maybe,” Smoke teased. “But don’t count on it.”

  “Smoke!” Sally scolded. “Don’t talk like that. You know I couldn’t hit anything when you first started teaching me. And I’m not the only one. Look at Matt. He’s as good as you.”

  “Maybe better,” Smoke said.

  “Who is Matt?”

  “Matt Jensen is a young man Smoke raised,” Sally said without any further explanation.