“Oh, yes,” Smoke answered dryly.
Preacher had taught him well as a youth to make cornbread, biscuits, fry bacon, to broil beaver tail, grill elk steak and bison hump. Beans became a specialty. Old-timers among the dwindling number of mountain men, proud of their vocabularies, called beans “the orchestral fruit.” When young Smoke had asked Preacher why, he had replied with the rest of the old saw, a twinkle in his eye, “the more you eat, the more you toot.”
Smoke and Carbone slung their scant belongings onto the platform and recovered their horses. “Gracias a Dios,” the harried-looking attendant in the stock car had muttered fervently as Sidewinder clomped down the loading chute.
“Now I wonder why he’s thanking God?” Smoke asked, pleased with his rapid recollection of Spanish.
Carbone laughed heartily. “In gratitude for getting rid of your horse, no doubt, amigo. Perhaps I misjudged their ability to handle an animal of such magnitude. Come, let me show you this beautiful town.”
Immediately outside the small, pink stone depot, on the street side, Smoke Jensen received his first lesson in how pervasive an influence Gustavo Carvajal had over the territory he claimed for his own. Tied by dirty string to a lamppost was a crudely hand-lettered poster.
“¡VIVA EL REY DEL NORTE!”
In smaller print, it announced that the collectors of “contributions” would be in Torreón each Thursday to gather the “gifts” of a “grateful people” for El Rey del Norte. Carbone read it with interest and translated for Smoke. His face twisted, memories of the sweetness of his dear wife a fiery goad in his mind.
“This is a bad one, amigo. Now he openly defies the authorities. What law there is in this town, if there is any, cannot be trusted.”
Smoke had changed his carrying habits back in El Paso. He now wore two revolvers, one on the left, high up, butt pointed forward, the other low and tied down on his right hip. He reached to slip the safety thong from the hammer of the right hand .44, then did the same to the left.
“Then our welcome might not be entirely warm?” he asked knowingly.
“Just so.”
They continued down the long street at the heart of Torreón. On every block they found three or four of the posters. When they reached the main street, which led to the cathedral, professionally printed ones were in abundance. Carbone nodded, and pointed with an upraised arm to a store front on the Plaza de Armas and a slant-roof livery type building next door.
“There is the establishment of my friend,” he announced. “It is best we obtain supplies and leave this place quickly.”
“Never had much jackrabbit in me,” Smoke observed. “Unless some of Carvajal’s hardcases muddy up the waters, I kind of favor taking our time.”
Carbone twitched the corners of his mouth. “I know you, amigo. You want to try them on, see of what they are made, eh?”
“Might as well know from the git-go, Carbone.”
They proceeded toward the outfitter’s where four unsavory individuals lounged outside, two leaning on a tie-rail. When they drew nearer, Carbone raised a cautioning hand to halt their progress.
“Oh-oh, I recognize two of those ladrónes. They ride for Carvajal,” he said quietly.
Smoke Jensen knew the type well. Their mouths and eyelids drooped like their overfull mustaches with an excess of insolence. Always used to being backed by enough guns to avoid risk, they puffed themselves up into an importance they could not support. They would, he decided, be quite easy.
“Shall we go ask them for the next dance?” Smoke prompted.
“It would be my pleasure,” Carbone answered tightly.
They separated, Carbone remaining on the elevated boardwalk, while Smoke edged out onto the cobbled street. The four hardcases had seen them and, no doubt, recognition had been mutual.
They knew that their Jefe had put a price of five thousand pesos in gold on Carbone. Perhaps la Donna Fortuna had put them in the way of earning that bonus this day. The long, lanky one gave a sharp whistle and made a summoning gesture with his left hand when the pair neared pistol range.
Three more joined the quartet of Carvajal’s bandidos, exiting the outfitter’s store and blinking at the bright light. Their momentary vulnerability signaled a prime opportunity.
“I think right now,” Smoke Jensen said softly.
“¡Los manos arriba!” Carbone shouted at them, then repeated, “Hands up! By authority of the governor of Aguascalientes, you are under arrest for banditry.”
All seven drew their weapons as one. The three from inside the store, still befuddled by sunlight, could only fire toward the sound of Carbone’s voice. Their shots went high. One of the lead slugs set off a brassy bass note from the huge bell in the cathedral tower across the square. The four without impairment opened up with more haste than the task required. Dust and splinters sprayed upward from the boardwalk around Carbone’s feet. A bullet smacked into the thick adobe wall near his head and sent a spray of chips through a cloud of red-brown.
Carbone, cool as ever, put a round in the gut of one bandit. Smoke Jensen had not been lagging. He had triggered two rounds, wounding another of the seven and putting two others into a dive for the protection of a water trough. With more courage than good sense, one of those still standing started toward Smoke, thumb-slipping the hammer of his Mendoza copy of a Colt .45 Peacemaker as he advanced.
“This is going to be work from here on,” Smoke advised his companion.
“Too true,” Carbone replied as he raised the sights of his six-gun to blast the life from a bandit crouched in the doorway to the outfitter’s.
Smoke Jensen had had enough of being a target. He shot the advancing bandit between the eyes. The huge black Charro hat the man wore flew from his head, its silver braid shimmering in the morning sun. He did a brief, grim dance of death and crashed to the cobbles of the street. That made only two down and dead for certain.
A bullet’s crack close by his ear turned Smoke Jensen toward the new threat. Fat and flushed of face, a bandit lumbered into the middle of the street, extending the area to be covered by Smoke and Carbone. He fired again, only to receive a powerful blow under his ribcage. It stopped him, and he gave Smoke a curious expression as he fell over his own boots.
One of the wounded had gotten back in action. He put a hole in Carbone’s jacket that came close enough for the Mexican gunfighter to dive for cover. A rain barrel under the overhang provided that for the moment. He paused to punch expended casings from his revolver and reloaded. The surviving bandidos used the lull in firing to make a run for the screen of trees and shrubs in the center of the Plaza de Armas.
Smoke sent rock chips and lead smears after them, then also reloaded. “We’re going to have to hunt them down or be backshot,” he opined.
“We had better split up, go at them from two directions,” Carbone suggested.
“Good idea. Ready?”
“As much as I’ll ever be,” Carbone responded, his easy life of late telling on him.
“Let’s do it,” Smoke urged.
Smoke Jensen ran diagonally across the bedding of smooth, rounded rocks that formed the roadway. His destination: a cairn of native stones with a polished granite slab that appeared to be some sort of monument. He crossed the halfway point before any reaction came from Carvajal’s bandits.
Bullets trailed him, always a scant few feet behind. He reached his objective. It was indeed a monument, to someone he didn’t recognize, for something he hadn’t time to translate. Only the date—16 September 1824—had vague meaning. Something about the Mexican revolt against Spain. An angry slug chipped a hunk from the corner of the monument and howled off to bury itself in a tree trunk.
Coldly energized, Smoke Jensen crouched and turned in the direction of the gunshot. He raised his .44 Colt and put a round into a large bush that waggled in agitation and seemed alive with a ball of powder smoke. A scream answered his efforts, followed by two more blasts from a revolver.
Smoke h
ad learned how to fire at a blind target years before. Preacher’s instructions had not been wasted. Smoke put two fast rounds to left and right of the point where he saw the muzzle flash, and used the bulk of the cairn to mask his change of position.
From the far side of the plaza he heard a rapid exchange of gunfire and the tinkle of glass as a stray slug took out a window. “One less, amigo,” Carbone’s voice called out gleefully.
Smoke Jensen nodded in satisfaction. By his count that made three dead, one wounded, only three more to track down. Rusty hinges creaked on a balcony door behind Smoke, and he jerked around in time to see the grinning face of a bandit looming over him. In his hands, Carvajal’s follower held a short-barrelled shotgun.
“You are the gringo el Rey sent us after,” he mouthed a moment before he unleashed a slash of 00 Buckshot from both barrels.
The double charge obliterated the testimonial to Torreón’s hero of Mexican Independence. Through its hellish blast, Smoke Jensen sent a single messenger of death. His .44 slug found a home in the chest of the bandido. Already off balance, he staggered, then lurched forward, crashed through the balcony rail, and pitched headfirst onto the street below.
His head made a wet melon sound a moment before his shoulders smacked into the cobbles. Obviously in a vulnerable spot, Smoke Jensen made a rapid move toward the large, musically splashing fountain in the center of the plaza. Geysers erupted from the surface of the catch basin as the surviving bandits tried to end the life of Smoke Jensen.
Smoke’s second .44 came to life as he neared the base of the stone adornment. He ducked low and returned fire on those so determined to kill him. Small birds, which had been startled by the sudden eruption of gunfire, cowered in the safety of the stone folds of the robe of the Virgin Mother. The force of the muzzle blast from Smoke’s .44 set them off again, in a whir of many wings, racing for yet another hiding place.
They burst forth and swung once around the statue in the fountain, then hurtled toward the cathedral. Smoke saw faint movement of a pair of legs through the screen of carefully manicured shrubs. Slowly he edged to a more covered position beside the fountain.
“He’s over by the fountain,” Diego Bernal informed his companions. “We’ll get him now.”
“I’m not so sure,” a scruffy bandit of slight stature countered. “These two are like madmen. They kill and kill and only joke about it.”
Still smarting from the wound he took early in the fight, Bernal glowered at the detractor. “Are you a coward? He is only a man. And a gringo at that. He will die begging us for mercy.”
He moved to one side and kicked the reluctant outlaw in his side. “Get up, cobarde. Move, you dog.”
Sudden pain exploded in Diego Bernal’s offending right leg, and he looked down in shock and surprise to see fragments of his kneecap fly into the bushes, along with scraps of his trouserleg. He went down like a cut-off stalk of corn. His screams could be clearly heard by Smoke Jensen, who had shot him.
“Jesus, Maria y Jose,” the uncommitted hardcase babbled. All at once, he wanted no part of this. Let someone else collect the bounty on the head of Carbone and this gringo. “¡Oje! Gringo, listen to me,” he called urgently. “I’m out of it. I am through.”
“Throw out your six-gun,” Smoke Jensen responded in Spanish.
Machismo, the ridicule of his companeros, and the sure and certain punishment meted out by el Rey when he returned to the headquarters estancia warred with his new-found respect of the deadly guns of Smoke Jensen. He gulped back his fear.
“No, Señor. I cannot do that.”
“Then you’ll die with it in your hand.”
“Better that, than a machete across my neck for failing el Rey,” he yelled his shaky defiance.
With that, he levered himself to his boots, a Mendoza .45 in each hand. Still more interested in escaping retribution than collecting a reward, he ran toward the sanctuary of the tall, wide double front doors of the cathedral. With every other stride, he turned sideways at the waist and fired blindly back at Smoke Jensen.
Smoke came from behind the fountain and drew a deep breath, his first full one for several long, tense minutes. Taking his time, he raised the .44 in his right hand and aligned the sights. His big, thick thumb eared back the hammer. Ahead of the big front post, the bandido had reached the midpoint of the fifteen stone stair risers at the entrance to the church.
He lurched to a stop there, startled at seeing his enemy so exposed and available. Relieved laughter bubbled up inside him. It was true. All gringos were crazy and would sooner or later lapse into some stupid act. He brought up his .45 Mendozas and slip-thumbed both. He howled with mirth now, his mouth formed into a fat, round “O.” He felt the solid shock of recoil as both weapons fired at once.
Totally without aim, the bullets went wide of their mark, albeit close enough for Smoke to hear their crack and thump into a tree to his right. He had fired simultaneously with the bandit. His round went true, straight into the black “O” of that howling mouth. It silenced forever the last laugh of the nameless outlaw.
“That’s the last of them, amigo,” Carbone opined as he appeared soundlessly beside Smoke.
Smoke Jensen surveyed the scene of carnage. “Seven down, a hundred-fifty to go. Not a bad day’s work. Right now, though, I’m hungry. And I could sure use some coffee.”
Carbone grinned. “My mouth, she is a little dry, also. If we could have some brandy in that coffee it would help.”
Nodding, Smoke reholstered his six-gun. “Suits. Then we get outfitted and leave here. I’ve got a feeling we’re not about to receive the key to the city.”
Genuine joy glowed in the eyes of Bobby Harris. His button nose wrinkled and set the freckles over the bridge into a dance of delight. “You mean I really get to have a full-size horse all for my own?”
“Yes, you do. Only you have to pick it out, gentle it, break it to saddle and to ride.” Bobby scowled at this, and Sally Jensen added, “This is a working ranch, Bobby. Everyone carries his own load. If you are going to ride for the brand, you’ll have to do everything any other cowboy would do.”
Bobby toed a dirt clod with his left boot and studied its movement intently a moment. “Yes, ma’am,” he managed to get out through the pink pout of his lower lip.
So far, Sally Jensen reflected, all had gone well. Bobby was cute as a button, she acknowledged, although streaks of willfulness often put a brittle edge on their relationship. He was testing her, she realized.
In contrast, Bobby had taken well enough to Burt Crocker, the foreman at Sugarloaf. In fact, Bobby looked up to Burt with almost as much shining adoration as he reserved for her still absent and beloved Smoke. She made an effort to banish her loneliness and put on a smile.
“Look at it this way, Bobby. Once you learn to gentle and break a horse Smoke’s way, you will be doing it with the hands. And, you get a bonus paid on each one of your broken horses when it is sold.”
That caught the lad’s attention. “I do? Gosh, Miz Sally, that’s awful nice. But it takes so long doin’ it Smoke’s way. Why can’t we jist do it the reg’lar way with tiedowns, sharp spurs an’ a whip? We could break ’em three times as fast.”
Hands on hips, she stood exasperated that the boy had so far failed to assimilate the message of Smoke Jensen. Animals had a right to be treated gently, to live lives as relatively free of pain as any human might expect, given the times and the rugged nature of the frontier. To Smoke, it wasn’t a matter of quantity and quotas met, but one of caring and delivering top quality.
“Because, young man, if Smoke Jensen ever caught a hand or anyone else treating any of his horses like that, that man would be fired on the spot. Usually after a good thrashing by Smoke.”
Bobby went big-eyed, recalling what had happened to Rupe Connors, and gulped back his belligerence. “I—ah—I guess if that’s the way Smoke wants it, that’s the way he’ll get it,” he stammered.
Sally gave him a smile now and reached out
to tossle his strawberry mop of unruly hair. “And don’t you ever forget it.”
“Oh, no, ma’am. Is there—is there any biscuits left, an’ some of that blackberry jam? I’m sorta hungry.”
Sally made a face of mock resignation. “And here the dinner dishes are not dry an hour. Mind, Bobby, only one, you’ll spoil your supper.”
Bobby put up two small fingers and peered coyly at her from under long, white lashes. “Two? I’m awful hungry.”
Those cobalt eyes melted something in Sally Jensen. “Two, then. But mind what I said about spoiling your supper.” Spoiling the kid is more like it, Sally Jensen, her mind chided her. What would Smoke say?
Twelve
It felt good to be in the mountains. Smoke Jensen breathed deeply of resinous pines and relaxed. He let his mind digest the situation they had encountered in Torreón. It seemed to him to be more than coincidence that the seven had been present at the outfitter’s shop. It was almost as though they had been waiting for them. He shared his conclusion with Carbone.
“It is possible. If Carvajal knew of my intention to meet with you and bring you south, men might have been waiting in Juarez. There is a telegraph line as far as Aguascalientes. Even in the state of Chihuahua it would only take a little of Carvajal’s money to buy information as to our destination.”
Smoke gave a snort. “Funny, I had been thinking the same thing. What about their being in that particular place?”
Carbone produced a rueful smile. “Valesquez is not only the best outfitter in Torreón, he is the only one. So, if Carvajal’s men knew we were traveling light, they would expect us to show up there.”
Smoke began to wonder if retirement to the life of a gentleman rancher had affected Carbone’s survival instinct. Too much had been left to chance. These might not be his Shining Mountains, but they were familiar territory. From here on, the big mountain man decided, they would rely on Preacher’s tried and proven methods.
Fury of the Mountain Man Page 11
