“I never, never seen anything like that,” he gulped.
“Let’s hope you don’t have occasion to see it again. Any more of that, and I’ll never get where I’m going,” Smoke told him sincerely, conscious of his cracked rib.
In camp that night, halfway through the steep Raton Pass, Bobby Harris sat hunched and quiet on the opposite side of the fire from Smoke Jensen. The boy hugged his knees up under his chin and took on a “hundred-mile stare.” Wise in the ways of youngsters, at least his own, Smoke kept a congenial silence. At last, Bobby sighed heavily and spoke.
“What are you going to do with me? I mean, I know you can’t be tied down with a kid taggin’ along to—to wherever it is you’re going.”
This kid had a good intelligence, Smoke realized. His grammar and speech habits had steadily improved the further away they got from the dead Rupe Connors. Now he had seized upon the key question to Smoke’s present dilemma.
“That’s a good question, boy,” Smoke allowed. “Trouble is, I don’t have an answer as yet.”
“Do you have a home? A real place with a family, I mean,” Bobby probed, his smooth brow wrinkled.
“Yes, I do. A horse breeding ranch up in the High Lonesome.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what the mountain men used to call the high Rockies, northwest of Denver. It means a big, empty place, with tall mountains all around, where even a whisper sounds loud to your ears.”
“Gosh. That’s po—poetic. You’re married, then?”
Smoke chuckled, the image of his beautiful Sally instantly displayed behind his eyes. He cut a shrewd look at Bobby. “Yes. Her name is Sally. She’s the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. We have four youngsters, too. They’re a bit older than you, living back East and going to school in Europe.”
“Ugh! What an awful thing to have to do. I remember being back there before my folks, my real dad that is, came out to Colorado. Couldn’t breathe the air for all the coal smoke. Noisy, dirty, all kinds of mean kids who’d steal your shoes if they had nothing else to take. Cops beatin’ on everyone. I think they must have had a rule that someone had to hate kids to be a policeman.”
Quite a chatterbox he had turned out to be. “The big cities are like that, true,” Smoke admitted. “Fortunately, one of my sons is in New England; green fields and rolling mountains, lazy rivers and sail boats. It’s right peaceful … if a little dull.”
Turned full-face to Smoke, eyes round in wonder, Bobby blurted, “Gosh, you been there, Mr. Smoke?”
“Yes, I have,” he replied, recalling that hectic race eastward to save his wife and unborn child from the mad designs of Rex Davidson and the man called Dagget. “But it wasn’t a pleasure trip.”
Bobby got a sly expression. “Some gun business, huh?”
Damn, maybe he was too astute, Smoke considered. “Sort of.”
“Folks say you’ve killed fifty men in shoot-outs,” Bobby hazarded.
For some reason, Smoke found himself uncomfortable under this youthful scrutiny. “At least.”
“Others say it’s more’n two hundred.”
“Bobby, there’s something you should learn young. Nobody who’s worth his salt keeps count. Killing’s not a contest, with prizes for the winner. A man does what he has to do. Deliberately or because he’s pushed into it and no place to go to avoid it. Only loud-mouthed punks keep score, cut notches in the grips of their six-guns. Most often, those are for show and blow, not for real.”
“Please, Mr. Smoke, tell me an exciting story about your life,” Bobby urged.
Smoke sipped the last of his coffee and poured the dregs into the coals. He chuckled softly before he spoke. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you a story about the greatest man I ever knew, and you stop chattering and go to sleep.”
Bobby took on a pained expression. “Must I?”
“We’ve got a long ride tomorrow.”
“All right.”
“Settled, then.” Smoke’s voice took on a faraway, dreaming tone. “A long time ago, there was this mountain of a man, name of Preacher. He was in the fur trade. Some said his daddy was a puma and his momma a rattlesnake.” A muffled giggle came from Bobby. “To near everyone, he was the biggest and best of all the old mountain men. Now, one day, Preacher came on this scrawny kid, dirty face and somewhat confused, because he’d lost his way in the mountains. Ol’ Preacher took mercy on the tenderfoot right then and there. He …” When Smoke Jensen finished the last line of his pean of praise to his mentor, Bobby Harris had snuggled down in his blanket and breathed softly in deep slumber.
Smoke doused the fire and rolled up in his own blankets. His last thoughts, before sound sleep muffled him, returned to the early afternoon. What the hell was he going to do with a ten-year old boy?
Four
Raton, New Mexico Territory, was wild and wooley. Track crews labored to extend the rails northward to meet in the pass with those inching south. The promise of prosperity that the railroad represented had attracted merchants, entrepreneurs, and of course, bartenders, gamblers and whores. Raw wood buildings went up faster than the track extended. The sawmill aroma and steady rap of hammers filled the air. Smoke Jensen and Bobby Harris rode into this industrious bustle near noon the next day.
“Gosh,” Bobby enthused, “this is a regular boom town.”
Smoke flashed a small grin. “If I was a betting man, I’d wager that fame and fortune will bypass the good folk of Raton. Popularity is destined to settle on some other place. No doubt Santa Fe. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe already has tracks into there. Any place two railroads meet, that’s where the big growth happens. Besides, Raton is Spanish for rat. Who ever heard of a great metropolis named Rat?”
That sent Bobby into a wild cackle of laughter. The big appaloosa horse and small paint pony ambled down the busy main street. A gust of giggles came from Bobby again when they reached the next intersection. Two young men looked their way.
Both had the air of blooming hardcases. Gaunt cheeks, hard, cold eyes, and the ready six-guns, extras stuck into the top of their trousers. They had the practiced sneers, too. Every two-bit punk in every low-class dive on the frontier had its share of these would-be predators. One of the pair reached up to tug at the wisps of a straggly mustache that tried to grow on an adolescent lip.
“You rescue that from a rag bag, mister?” he asked of Smoke Jensen. “Or don’t you give enough of a rip to outfit yer kids decent and proper?”
Damn, Smoke thought irritably in his first reaction, the kid drew trouble like horse droppings attract flies. Then Smoke cut his eyes sideways to Bobby. It might seem funny to some, but he’d never given any thought to the boy’s clothes.
Bobby wore a handmade shirt, and so did he, to accommodate shoulders too broad to fit off-the-shelf merchandise, Smoke weighed. On closer examination now, he saw that the boy’s was made from a flour sack, while his own shirt had been cut and handsewn from the finest quality cloth by Sally. Faded, much-patched jeans were belted tightly at Bobby’s slender waist by a length of frayed lariat. Bare feet were stuffed into worn stirrups. Not too unusual for a kid from a hardscrabble farm, Smoke evaluated. That summation released a hot glow aimed at the rudeness of these punks. He turned his attention back to them.
“It appears your folks might have dressed you well enough, but they sure neglected teaching you manners,” Smoke spoke levelly.
“Don’t!” one rowdie barked, his left hand lifted in a stopping gesture, the right hovered over the butt-grip of his six-shooter. “Don’t get lippy with us, mister. You’d be bitin’ off a whole passel more trouble than you could handle.”
“Gabe’s right, mister. You’re strangers to these parts, so you don’t know who you’re mouthin’ off to.”
Smoke snorted derisively. “And I don’t have any burning desire to find out. Why don’t we just ease off and go our separate ways?”
“Are you kidding?” Gabe shouted, warming to the vibrant aliveness of battle lust. �
�You insult us like that and think you can just turn yer back and walk off? I got a mind to knock you into the middle of next week.”
“No,” Smoke responded with low intensity. “Not the both of you could do that. On the other hand, if I took a mind to it, I could kick your butts so hard and so high you’d look like you were wearing fur collars.”
Bobby’s eyes had grown wide and wild, and he squirmed in the saddle in anticipation of another Smoke Jensen solution. Smoke took note of that while the faces of the two punks turned crimson. A sudden jerk of Gabe’s head brought his attention back to them.
They couldn’t be more than seventeen, eighteen, Smoke decided. Too young to die. Someone else could teach them the hard lessons they needed. He especially didn’t want one of them to open the dance when Bobby was in the line of fire. Smoke bit back his own rising call to combat and shook his head.
“I agree,” Smoke broke the silence. “The boy could use some dressing up. I’ll tend to it today. Now, let’s just all back off, and we’ll be on our way.”
Without waiting for a reply, though a part of Smoke’s mind burned with an unaccustomed feeling of humiliation, he lifted Sidewinder’s reins and set the big appaloosa in motion. It took all his willpower to turn away from the confrontation and not give these impudent vermin what they deserved.
“Yer yellah!” Gabe shouted. “That’s what. A yellah cur dog.”
Smoke cut his eyes to Bobby. What he read on the boy’s face profoundly shocked him. Rather than relief, or pride, the lad’s expression revealed a deep sense of being shamed by Smoke backing down from the punks. Bobby’s lower lip protruded like a pink bulb, and he would not meet Smoke’s gaze. That reaction confused Smoke. Bobby actually looked forward to the violence and blood, perhaps even to a death. Could the boy have already been irredeemably bent and twisted by his drunken lout of a stepfather?
“Over there,” Smoke announced a couple of minutes later.
Smoke directed Bobby to a haberdasher’s establishment. So far it stood alone, not crowded into a block of other, similar clapboard buildings. Sparkling clean windows, despite the dust haze in the air, displayed a wide variety of clothing items for men and boys. Inside, Smoke oversaw outfitting Bobby with two pairs of new trousers, four shirts, a light jacket, and boots.
“Do I gotta wear these?” Bobby protested, reverting to his illiterate speech pattern. “They’re hot, an’ tight, make my feet hurt. I done gone barefoot most my life, don’t see why I should change now.”
Nearing the end of his patience, Smoke Jensen glowered down at him. “Because winter is coming, and it gets damn cold around here. You need to break them in good before you have to wear them all the time.”
Hope flashed brightly in Bobby’s eyes. “Then I can go without ’em some of the time?”
“When we’re not in town,” Smoke qualified.
“Shoot!” It came out sounding much like another, nastier word.
All but simpering, a prissy clerk observed, “Your boy has quite a mouth on him, I see.”
“Don’t you start,” Smoke growled and silenced the salesclerk. “Now we need a hat.”
Swallowing the knot of fear in his throat, the delicate vender started to a tier of shelves. “I have just the thing. The latest fashion from New York.”
He produced a dark blue item with a low, domed crown and narrow, rolled brim. Long azure satin ribbons hung to the rear. Both Smoke and Bobby made expressions of distaste that renewed their mutual bond.
“I think something more suited to this country,” Smoke suggested.
Long pale fingers fidgeting, the clerk found another boy’s style in brown that matched the vest Bobby had fancied for himself. At least it didn’t have ribbons. The youngster gave it one slight glance and turned his button nose to Smoke in appeal.
“I want one like yours.”
Smoke grunted. “When you’re a man, you can have a man’s hat. That’ll do fine,” he added for the clerk. For some reason Smoke felt eager to get himself and Bobby out of this place.
Out on the street, looking store-fresh in his new clothes, Bobby glanced to the left and right. “Now what?”
“First we find a place to eat. Then we look for someone who can help us locate a place for you to stay.”
“Bu—but I don’t want to stay here. I want to go with you.”
“Look, kid, you said it yourself the other night. You can’t go along where I’m headed. So we have to find someone willing and suitable to take you in.”
Tears welled, but didn’t escape Bobby’s big cobalt eyes. “Yes, you’re right. I know that. But I hoped … for a minute there …” He stopped short.
“It’s rough, kid. Sure. I got left alone when I was not much older than you. Preacher came along, took me under his wing. Things worked out.”
Bobby’s face brightened. “Like in that story you told me in camp?”
“True story, Bobby. Let’s eat. It’s been so long since breakfast my tongue’s forgot what coffee tastes like.”
During the meal, Smoke decided that finding a minister, if there was one in this raw town, would be the best place to start. On the street once again, they walked three blocks, and Smoke asked several people about the presence of a reverend.
“Oh, there’s a church over in the Mexican section. The padre there can probably help you. Ol’ Colonel Larson is out ridin’ the circuit. He preaches here twice a month. Should be back any day now,” one helpful local informed him.
Smoke thanked him and they turned away. That brought Smoke and Bobby face-to-face with the two budding thugs who had earlier taunted them. They blocked the boardwalk in a hunch-shouldered, menacing manner.
“We meet again, you yellow dog,” Gabe snarled. “This here is Pete McGiver, and I’m Gabe Winkler. That should have you wettin’ yer britches. Now we want you to get down on your belly and crawl for us.”
No one who knew him, and most who didn’t, ever suggested Smoke Jensen had the least bit of back-down in him, let alone the willingness to crawl for scum like this. “No,” Smoke said in the voice of Death. “Bobby, get out of the way. Cross the street right now.”
His reluctance to bring grief to these neophyte, callow bullies had been genuine. This latest challenge had simply drained Smoke’s supply of compassion. If he worked it just right, they might yet live to profit from the experience. “Do it, Bobby,” he demanded again.
“Do it, Bobby,” Gabe mimicked.
Frowning, unwilling to go, Bobby took hesitant steps into the street. Smoke kept his eyes locked on the would-be badmen. Pete McGiver seemed nervous; beads of oily sweat popped out on his forehead. Gabe sneered and preened. His right hand hovered over the cheap pearl grips of his .44 Merwin and Hulbert.
“Either you crawl or go for that iron, yellow dog,” Gabe challenged.
“No. I don’t crawl before any man. Leave it alone,” Smoke urged.
“DRAW, GAWDAMN YOU!” Gabe bellowed.
Smoke shook his head. “Sorry. I won’t do it. You want this so badly, you draw. Both of you. I’ll let you get your irons clear of leather.”
“Then what?” Gabe taunted. “You gonna pee your britches and run home to mommy?”
“No. If I choose, I’ll then kill the both of you.”
“Haw—haw!” Gabe brayed. Then, with a preparatory nod to Pete, they both went for their six-guns.
He knew it! Gabe Winkler knew he was fast, one of the best around these parts. The old fool hadn’t even touched the worn grips of that old hog-leg, and here he had his six-inch barrel clear of leather and coming up on line. Pete had his shooter in action, too.
Then it happened.
And to his dying day, Gabe Winkler could never account for the blur of motion and sudden hot pain in the bulging biceps of his right arm. Only belatedly did he hear the report of the stranger’s six-gun.
Gabe’s .44 Merwin and Hulbert went flying. The pain had hardly begun to register when the stranger took a quick two steps forward and laid the barrel of
his .44 Colt along side Pete McGiver’s head. Pete went to the boardwalk like a poleaxed steer. Then Gabe found himself looking into the coldest set of gray eyes he had ever seen. Like two fancy gun muzzles.
“Don’t play with grownup’s toys, sonny,” the stranger told him.
From across the way, a high, thin voice chirped, “That’s showin’ ’em, Smoke.”
“Smoke?” the aching Gabe worked over his lips.
“That’s what folks call me. Smoke Jensen,” the deadly stranger told Gabe.
Gabe wanted to puke up his last meal and beg for mercy. Then he realized he had already received the most merciful treatment one could ever get from Smoke Jensen. “You—you let us live.”
Jensen’s lips quirked at the corners. “You’re too stupid to be worth killing. Go back to the farm or your dad’s ranch and learn how to be a good farmer or stockman. This life’s not for you or your friend.” Smoke bent and removed their firearms, tucked them into his waistband and strolled calmly across the street.
“Hold on a minute there, mister.” Part of what passed for the local law in Raton had arrived on the scene.
He was young, bull-whang tough, and so thoroughly high-altitude tanned it made his big, boldly blue eyes seem to leap from his face. The little, rectangular half-glasses perched on the tip of his twice-broken nose had to be someone’s idea of a bad joke. Smoke touched Bobby’s shoulder and stopped walking. The man and boy turned to the lawman.
“You just shot a man, pistol-whipped another, and now you walk off as though you were headed for a cool beer and some fried pork skins.”
“Thank you, but we just ate,” Smoke quipped with a straight face. “Truth is, since we are strangers here, I was going to have to locate someone to tell me where I could find the law.”
“The law’s right here,” the deputy marshal said nastily. He flipped over the wide lapel of his black broadcloth coat to reveal the badge. “We have a little talking to do about this shooting.”
Fury of the Mountain Man Page 4
