“Your pardon, your Excellency,” he began in the fawning tone so appreciated by Gustavo Carvajal, who called himself El Rey del Norte in his saner moments. “Both of the gentlemen in question are notorious as pistóleros. And apparently they have done the unthinkable. They have trained some of their peones in how to use firearms. A dangerous precedent if it were to become widespread. Armed men can determine their own destinies, and even who it is who rules them.”
“Yes—yes, I understand all of that,” Carvajal snapped. “So, what you are telling me is that they resisted, and did so successfully?”
“It is in our reports,” Regales said quietly.
“What I still can’t understand is why this unnatural quirk remains in my fate. In all of three states of Central Mexico, not a soul refuses to bow down or pay tribute to me, except for these two stubborn, stupid haciendados; Esteban Carbone y Ruis and Miguel Antonio Martine y Garcia. How can this be?”
All three dissembled. “We do not know, Jef—er—Excellency. We have already given Carbone what should have been a death blow. His villages are in ruins, the priest run off, what peones remain on the estancia are frightened and cowed. Yet he continues to resist,” Humberto Regales defended the 230 men of Carvajal’s bandit army.
“Only through the assistance and connivance of that cabrón, Martine,” Carvajal snapped. He reached unthinkingly to one side of the thin wisp of mustache that drooped down below his jawline. He tugged on it while he contemplated what his next order would be. With the wide empty space on his upper lip between the two sides of his mustache, and the equally spindly goatee that sprang from his lower lip, his face had a saturnine appearance.
Abruptly he stopped pacing and turned on his subordinates. “Well, then, we will move on Martine now and see if that doesn’t break the spirits of those two old comrades in arms. And end their willingness to resist.”
Two
Pinpoints of starlight showed faintly, low in the eastern half of the sky’s dome. Thin slices of pink and blue, shot through with soft orange, still limned the western horizon, though not brightly enough to wash out the evening star. Venus, Smoke Jensen mused as he turned thick slices of bacon in the cast iron skillet. The goddess of love. He cut his eyes to the opposite direction. The moon wouldn’t rise until near midnight.
In his reflections, he pictured how the moonlight silvered the tall black pines that rose above his home. He could visualize yellow shafts of light spilling from the windows, a thread of smoke curling from the chimney. Sally would be finishing the details of a substantial and delicious supper. Six hands and Crocker to feed. It made for a lot of work. Sally was up to it, though.
A lot of time had passed since Smoke brought Sally to the Sugarloaf and they realized his dream of a large, comfortable house, its inside walls ringing with the shouts and laughter of happy, healthy children. It had all come with time. Those years had been kind to Sally. To Smoke she still looked the sweet young bride.
In the soft lamp glow of their bedroom, she showed none of the physical traces of bearing three children, two of them twins. They had all dearly loved the High Lonesome, with the same dedication as their father, those kids. And Billy, too, whom they had adopted before Sally’s first pregnancy. Their lovely daughter always cried when she had to leave the Sugarloaf for the outside world. All were gone now.
Billy was in the next to last year at the University of Paris. The twins had gone on to Europe, too. Although far from full-grown, the youngest, Kurt, attended school back East. Sally had insisted. They needed to know more than how to ride, rope, brand and shoot. Only spottily did the schoolhouse in Big Rock offer classes, and never beyond the eighth grade. The children of Smoke Jensen, Sally contended, would have need for more than doing their ciphers, reading and writing on an elementary level. And so, beguiled as always by Sally’s beauty, Smoke had given in on the point.
Smoke’s youngest son attended a preparatory school for “young gentlemen.” Smoke snorted at the thought of the term. Kurt Jensen, with his father’s broad shoulders, big hands, and, at 13, awkward feet, could hardly be confused with those wet-nosed, simpering, pale-faced sissies with whom he now associated.
From the ranch hands, Kurt had learned to cuss like a trooper from the age of eight. He sat a horse like he’d been born on it. All of the kids did. Lean, hard, deeply tanned, Kurt was a product of the High Lonesome and took to “gentling” with all the resistance of an unbroke mustang to a saddle.
Many had been the letters in the early days. Words of protest and outrage poured from the spirited nature of young Master Kurt Jensen. But never a word of his being vicious, brutal or malicious. After the outrage-venting first paragraphs, the letters always indicated that the boys, whose noses Kurt had bloodied, eyes he’d blackened, and lips he’d split, had all had it coming. No, Smoke conceded, it wasn’t the physical punishment meted out by his spirited son. To those docile and controlled Easterners, it was the very idea of anyone standing up for his rights that so outraged them.
To the north, in the gathering darkness, a wolf howled. That surprised Smoke Jensen. He wondered that any wolves remained in so populous an area. Man had always held hatred for the wolf. Perhaps it went back to when man and the wolf vied for possession of a particularly warm and comfortable cave on the edge of a world of ice. Whatever, the emnity, at least on man’s part, had remained to this day. For the wolf’s part, he simply didn’t care. The old timber prowler howled again.
To the south, the high, yapping cries of his lesser cousins, the coyotes, answered. “Hello, Brother Wolf,” Smoke Jensen greeted in a low voice. “Go in peace, if other men will let you.”
Suddenly, Smoke knew why it was he had turned his thoughts to the children. He did not disagree in the least with Sally’s insistence that they receive a quality, university education. Only that he had a deep, serious concern that exposure to Eastern culture might turn his brood into marshmallows.
“Wild and free, like Brother Wolf there, that’s what I want you to be,” Smoke breathed softly. And it was almost a prayer.
He saw the flurry of activity from a distance that prevented recognizing what was happening. Dust boiled up around the legs of a man who stood in a corral. He raised and flung down one arm as though driving stakes with a sledgehammer. Pitiful squawls and the shrill voice of a child reached Smoke Jensen’s ears.
South of Trinidad, Colorado, now, it had been two days since the evening he contemplated his children’s future in the socially correct East. The sounds of this almost human agony drew Smoke Jensen closer. What he saw brought a coldness to his heart that reflected in his icy gray eyes.
A man was beating a small pony with a piece of firewood as long and thick as an arm. To his side, a barefoot boy of about ten looked on in horror and begged the man to stop.
“Please, Paw. Don’t—don’t hurt Dollar no more. She’s bleedin’ ” the little lad shrieked hysterically. Tears ran down his face.
“You stop that bawlin’, hear? Or I’ll take this stick to you.”
“Oh, please—please, Paw. Take your mad out on me. Don’t beat poor Dollar no more.”
Swiftly the man rounded on the boy. “Gawdamn you, Bobby, I got a mind to do jist that.” He back-handed the child with enough force to split the youngster’s upper lip and send him staggering.
Hard, frigid anger burst inside Smoke Jensen. He could never abide anyone who beat women, children or helpless animals. He reined in Sidewinder and dismounted. In three fast strides he reached the corral. Both hands on the top rail, he vaulted over and approached the man.
“I think that’s about enough,” Smoke growled ominously.
The man rounded on him. “Keep yer nose out of this, butt-face,” the red-visaged brute snarled. “Or I’ll kick yer tail up twixt yer shoulderblades.”
“Start kicking, you worthless son.” Smoke’s words came heavy with menace as he pulled on a supple pair of thin leather gloves.
Advancing two steps, the man raised his cudgel as he spat
words from froth-flecked lips. “No stranger’s comin’ betwixt a man an’ his kid, or his animals.”
“He ain’t my paw,” the boy shouted. “He’s my step-dad. An’—an’ I hate him.”
“Yer gettin’ yers next, Bobby, soon’s I finish with this no-account,” snarled the man, his big beer-belly jiggling. Before the last word had sounded, he took a hefty swing at Smoke Jensen.
Smoke calmly made a back-step to avoid the club. “It’s been my experience that bullies are all cowards at heart,” he observed in a bantering tone.
Rage caused the slack muscles in arms that could have far greater power to quiver. “I’ll show you ‘coward,’ you bastid!”
Before the billet of stovewood could whistle a quarter of the way toward Smoke Jensen’s head, Smoke stepped inside its arc and popped the fat-lipped man solidly in the mouth. It rocked him, stunned him. He tottered backward a little, spat blood, and roared like a bull. Smoke took the charge, slipped a blow with the stick off one shoulder and went to work on the soft middle.
Grunts and gasps, sickly with the odor of stale beer, came from blubbery lips. Smoke’s opponent wobbled on his feet, sucked in a huge draught of air and measured another swing. Smoke Jensen stepped back and let him come. As the club descended, Smoke took his adversary by a thick right wrist and aided in the down-stroke. The cudgel left the man’s grasp as Smoke flipped him heels over head. A long whoof escaped the brute when he landed on his back.
“I could end this right now, since you are a bully and a coward, by simply telling you my name,” Smoke advised him factually.
Slower than usual, the man rose to his boots. He cut a wicked gaze at the boy, then sought his bludgeon. “I don’t give a damn about your name, saddle-trash.”
“I’m curious about names,” Smoke taunted. “What’s yours?”
“Rupe Connors. An’ if you was from around here, you’d be pissin’ your jeans ta hear that.”
“As it is, I’m terribly unimpressed.” Smoke Jensen sighed heavily. “Well, then, playtime is over.”
He closed in on the blubber-waisted lout. Hard rights and lefts popped off a head that began to wobble uncontrollably. Connors pawed the air in a feeble attempt to fend off the punishing blows. It had no effect. Smoke rocked back and cocked a hefty right fist. He threw it straight forward with a force that came up from his toes.
Cartilage smashed and bone splintered. A fountain of red gushed from the ravaged nose. Howling now, Rupe Connors stumbled blindly after Smoke Jensen. Pain caused Connors’ eyes to squint shut. A sudden hot explosion on the side of his head set his ear to ringing. He turned that way in fury and caught a solid left that mashed his lips.
Smoke Jensen set his boots and went to work on the midsection. Connors grunted and gagged and bent double, sucking in desperation for air. He sagged and slowly went to his knees. Blue-white light flashed off the wicked blade of the knife Connors came up with from the back of his belt. The only effect this danger had on Smoke Jensen was to have him change his tactics.
“There’s no such thing as a fair or unfair fight,” old Preacher had instructed the boy, Smoke Jensen. “There’s only a winner an’ a loser. Your mind should be set on al’ays bein’ the winner.”
Smoke had taken that advice to heart. So now, instead of backing off, giving up in the face of possible death or mutilation, he shifted his weight and kicked Rupe Connors full in the face. Connors went over backward, and his head made a solid klonk on the hard-packed ground of the corral.
He moaned and rolled onto one side. Ever so slowly, Rupe Connors forced himself to rise to his knees. Panting, blood spraying from his mangled lips, he got his boots under him and staggered toward Smoke Jensen. He had not lost hold of his knife, Smoke discovered.
Smoke could have drawn his own large, heavy Bowie and carved out Connors’ liver. But he hadn’t taken a hand in this to kill anyone. Maybe he could still avoid it. When Connors made a half-hearted slash, Smoke jumped to one side and stepped past the thick-bellied enemy. Then he drove rock-like knuckles into Connors’ kidneys.
Rupe Connors squealed like a pig. Gagging, a pink string of saliva hanging from his chin, he fell heavily on his knees. New pain lanced as a chunk of gravel dug into the vulnerable space below his right kneecap. Screaming his outrage, Connors tried to make his body obey the commands of his fogged brain. It resulted in an agonizing, lethargic turn to his left. Pushing up with his left hand, he came to his boots. Black hate blazing in his bloodshot eyes, Connors duck-walked toward Smoke Jensen.
Again Smoke let him come, always mindful of the nasty tip and keen edge of the big Greenriver knife Connors had fisted. When the distance between them narrowed to arm’s length, Connors lunged at Smoke. Jensen parried the attack with a backhand slap, then pivoted around the left side of Connors. He kept turning until he could grasp the knife arm with both hands. Then he yanked down at the same moment he drove his knee upward.
Smoke heard the bone break, a grisly, dry stick sound, a moment before Connors screamed like a woman. The knife fell from numb fingers. Smoke had realized earlier that he would have to go all out. Anything short of killing the man if possible. So he didn’t let go. Instead, he yanked on the broken arm with all his force, set his boots and hurled Connors into a corral rail.
Bleating cries of sheer agony fought past the crimson mush of Connors’ lips. He could not force his eyes open even when the cascade of powerful, hurting punches pounded his chest and head. He sagged, slumped, wavered, and fell face-first into a large mud puddle.
There had been no rain in a long time. One of the horses that shuffled nervously at the far side of the corral had provided the moisture. Panting slightly himself, Smoke Jensen stood over the fallen man.
“You through showing me manners?” Smoke asked.
Rupe Connors raised his head, smeared with the red-brown mud of southern Colorado. “Gawdamn you, gawdamn you to hell.” Blackness welled up then and Connors slumped back, head resting on his uninjured forearm.
“Gol—lee, mister!” young Bobby gasped. “That was sure some bodacious fight. But, jeez, he’ll kill me now for certain sure. Wi—will you take me with you, mister? Please? Take me along.”
“Son, I can’t do that,” Smoke Jensen answered honestly. What would he do with a kid? Especially where he was headed.
“Please, you gotta. He’ll do for me like he did my maw.”
Coldness touched at Smoke Jensen. “What do you mean, boy?”
“He—he beat on us, like he done my pony. Maw an’ me. Ol’ Rupe would get all drunked up and come home late. Yank Maw outta bed and whomp on her something awful. If I even let out a squeak, he’d go after me next. Some times I didn’t even have to remind him I was there. He liked it, don’t you see? Then—then one time he hurt Maw somethin’ awful. That was two weeks ago. She had to lay in bed a whole week, just gettin’ worser an’ worser. An’ then she—she just … went away.”
Grim outrage fired that special sense of honor and justice deep within Smoke Jensen. “She left? Took off and left you alone with him?”
“No, sir.” Tears found their way down Bobby’s cheeks. “She died. We buried her over there by the root cellar.” The boy gulped down air to renew his plea. “An’ that’s why you gotta take me along. He’ll kill me for sure now, what with Maw bein’ dead, an’ seein’ as how I watched him get so bad whupped.”
“I don’t think so, son.” Smoke gauged the amount of punishment Connors had absorbed. “At least not right away. I’ll stop off in the next town, tell the sheriff to come take a look in and ask some questions. You answer him truthfully, and it’ll all go right for you.”
“B-B-But, Rupe’ll beat the tar outta me before that. I know it.”
“Listen, boy, where I’m going I can’t have a kid along. If you want, ride out of here for a while, keep the place in sight, and come back when the sheriff arrives.”
Bobby wiped at his wet cheeks. “If you say it’ll be all right,” he offered tentatively.
; “I’m sure of it,” Smoke encouraged, wishing he felt as confident as he sounded.
Early that morning, in the large town of Zacatecas, on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Madre Occidental, Esteban Carbone and Miguel Martine met at a cantina. The mountains around the city, layered in yellow, tan, red, and brown, produced a spectacular effect. Some day this mining town could attract people from all over the world. Now, with the railroad only partly completed, in the easy places further south, it retained some of the sleepy nature of an isolated village. When the saucy young lady brought a bottle of tequila, two shooters, salt and lime, the old friends watched with appreciation as her firm, mobile young bottom retreated to the bar.
“You are a married man, amigo,” they said in unison and laughed.
Carbone poured and they went through the age-old ritual of licking the web of one hand, sprinkling salt there from the small dish, picking a wedge of lime. They licked salt, swallowed the clear liquor, bit the lime. The stringent juice cooled their throats as it trickled down. Carbone dispensed more.
“Salud, dinero y amor …” he raised his glass in toast.
“Y tiempo de gustarlos,” Martine concluded.
“Health, money, and love,” Carbone said with an edge of bitterness. “We have plenty of those. But the time to enjoy them …” He gave an elaborate shrug. “I fear that is growing short.”
“So, then, Carbone, how long do you think it will be?”
“Until the end? Another month or two,” Carbone opined.
“No, I mean until he gets here.”
“Another week, perhaps. I am to be in El Paso to meet him then. Have you had any further incidents?”
Fury of the Mountain Man Page 2
