Fury of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

Carbone chuckled. “More so, Pepe. Your illustrious father, our fine cantinero here, has surely heard of him.”

  Gonzalo Ortiz nodded solemnly. “Sí, I have heard from the Patrón of his friend with the so-fast gun. Is it true you have killed five hundred men, Señor Jensen?”

  Smoke pulled a face. “Oh, not by a long sight. Though more than’s good for a man’s soul, I can assure you.”

  “It is reassuring to hear you speak of the soul, Señor Jensen,” the padre injected as he appeared in the doorway of the devastated church. He was short and round, moon-faced. His brown Franciscan habit swayed around his bare ankles as he walked toward the cantina. Sandals flapped up a cloud of dust and ash.

  “Good afternoon, Father,” Smoke addressed the cleric respectfully.

  “And to you. Don Miguel told of your coming. I am not certain that this event pleases me. There is bound to be more fighting and killing.”

  “Only if Carvajal refuses to listen to reason,” Smoke told him.

  Thin eyebrows raised on a wide forehead. “You intend to reason with that jackal? Using what, may I ask, Señor?”

  Smoke patted the receiver of his Winchester Express rifle. “With this. It’s the only argument folks like him understand.”

  The priest sighed and raised his eyes to heaven. “Like I said, more fighting and killing. Although I will admit in this case it is in a good cause. May God grant you success and soon, Señor.”

  “Thank you, Padre.”

  Carbone cleared his throat. “Now then, has anything been done to organize a clean up? To provide guards for the village?”

  “What for, Don Esteban?” another young man asked acidly. “There’s nothing worth Carvajal coming back for.”

  “You’re still alive,” Carbone reminded him.

  “And willing to fight,” the youth answered him hotly.

  “Good! Good, then. I suggest you make yourself the new owner of one of these weapons we took from some misguided men in Limosna. Six of them.”

  “Eighteen all together,” Smoke reminded him. “They won’t be needing them any more. Take one, and some ammunition, then tell your friends. We’ll show you how to fight with them.”

  Lowering westward, the sun slanted the shade of Ortiz’s canvas roof far out into the street. Under Carbone’s direction, work teams labored at removing the rubble and clearing side streets. They stopped frequently to wash out the taste of dust and ashes. The women worked lovingly on the interior of the church. Smoke Jensen had taken the young men who had selected six-guns and rifles from the supply obtained in Limosna.

  At the edge of the village, he set up a line of damaged clay pots as targets and began instructing them in the use of their new weapons. It proved a more difficult task than he imagined. Not five minutes into his careful lecture on function and nomenclature, an accidental discharge nearly took the big toe off one pupil.

  “You were supposed to go through the motions, not actually load that thing,” Smoke snapped at him, worried that more accidents could rob him of willing students.

  White-faced, the youth responded through chattering teeth. “I thought ‘through the motions’ meant put in the bullets, Señor.”

  “Put in the cartridges,” Smoke corrected, then hastened to prevent further disaster, “No—no, do not put cartridges in your weapons. Only when I say so. Clear?”

  “Claro, sí,” came a chorus of answers.

  Patiently, Smoke went through the nomenclature again. “Loading gate, half-cock, hammer, cocking lever, cylinder, chamber, front sight, rear sight …” On it went.

  At last he came to the point when he could not avoid taking the next step. “Load one round,” he commanded. “Adjust cylinders to position the cartridge for firing. Full cock. Take aim. Fire!”

  Most of the twenty-seven rounds did mortal damage only to the air. Two clay pot chunks disintegrated. Smoke beamed at his successful students.

  “Let’s see if you can do that again.” To the whole class, he commanded, “Eject your spent round, load one full cartridge.”

  With that accomplished, Smoke took them through the drill again. To his surprise and pleasure, three pot shards shattered this time. Someone else had gotten lucky. Encourage, encourage, teach by building confidence, he reminded himself.

  “Good. If you can hit that small a target, you’ll have no trouble with a man.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, and for a moment, Smoke’s conscience troubled him. During tomorrow’s drill, they would come to understand what he meant, he consoled himself. A sudden, growing rumble of hoofbeats interrupted the lesson.

  Smoke looked up to see the familiar tall, dignified figure of Martine riding toward him at the head of a sizable number of men. A smile brightened his face for the first time since arriving in Merced. Martine halted his coal-black steed and nodded curtly to Smoke.

  The white scar on his long, gaunt cheek writhed when he spoke. “We meet again, old friend. I am sorry it is under such …” Martine paused to cut a glance around his ruined village. “Such circumstances.”

  “I’m glad to be able to help out, Martine,” Smoke replied.

  “I see you have gotten to the crux of our problem. These men are farmers, vaqueros, herdsmen, tenders of flocks, tradesmen. They are not gunfighters. All must learn a new skill.”

  “They seemed willing enough,” Smoke depreciated his commanding role in the target practice session.

  “Having one’s home burned around one’s ears tends to encourage such zeal,” Martine observed. “I’m glad you are here,” he returned to his welcome. “Now we can concentrate on carrying this fight to Carvajal.”

  “I’d suggest we meet at the cantina, hold a council of war,” Smoke put out.

  “Yes. A good idea. Diego, go find our friend, Carbone, and bring him to the cantina. It is still standing?” he asked Smoke in surprise.

  “Not so’s you’d notice. Your man, Ortiz, has set up outside. Some of the men have rescued tables and chairs. We’ll be comfortable enough.”

  They settled down to a table ten minutes later. After listening to an update on Carvajal’s activities since Carbone left for the border, the three gunfighters, along with Pablo Alvarez, Martine’s segundo, sat in silence digesting the import of this news. At last Smoke broke the quiet.

  “I have a few ideas on how to deal with this bandit scum.”

  “Let’s hear them, by all means,” Martine urged.

  “First off, we send out men who know the country to scout out Carvajal’s main camp.”

  “Consider it done,” Martine agreed. To Alvarez he said, “Take five men, good ones, and trail the bandidos to their lair. Send one man back by midnight, another at dawn. We want to know everything we can find out.”

  “Sí, Patrón.” Alvarez rose and departed, shouting as he walked to his horse, “Ricardo, Tomas, Bienvenedes …”

  “Now,” Smoke began again. He spoke for ten minutes, laying out his plans of ambush, fright tactics and confusion, all schemes that had worked well for him in the past. Smiles of renewed confidence and expectation bloomed on the faces of his friends.

  Seventeen

  For all their deprivation, the people of Merced put out a fine feed for the men who had come to avenge their losses. Although inexperienced in fighting with firearms and facing an organized force, the volunteers from Martine’s other villages and the ranch put aside their uncertainties to belly up to mounds of carnitas—chunks of pork, deep-fried in huge copper caldrons that let the woodsmoke of the fire curl and lick over the brown lumps—giant bowls of beans, and ample stacks of late season corn, boiled in blackened tubs.

  While the neophyte fighting men filled their stomachs, a guitar took up a sprightly tune. Another joined in. An old man showed up in the plaza with a fiddle. A father and son, a boy of about twelve, appeared in Mariachi costume with dented, but functional cornets.

  Their music was raw, wild and primitive, and appealed to something in Smoke Jensen. He watched the ritual of building a soft taco, in a corn torti
lla, with small cubes of the carnitas, chopped onion and chilis, sliced radishes, fresh cilantro, and seasoned with lemon juice. His mouth watered and he dug right in. While he chomped on one of the savory sandwiches, he spoke earnestly with Carbone and Martine.

  “I want to take your men through more detailed shooting instructions. If they are going to operate on their own, they’ll need to handle their guns as second nature.”

  “It’s hard to teach peaceful peons to be aggressive,” Martine observed.

  “True,” Carbone agreed. “And those who are mostly indio, still believe it is the report of the gun that knocks a man down.”

  Smoke cut his eyes in a sideways glance. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Not at all. Believe it or not, it’s a hold-over from the days of the conquistadores. The Aztec and Meztec brujós, their medicine men and priests, told them that was so, and the belief has lasted until now,” Martine explained.

  “Only the Yaquis and Apaches in Sonora seem to know better,” Carbone added.

  “All the more reason for heavy training,” Smoke advised.

  He carried through on that idea early the next morning. Standing in front of a line of volunteers, Smoke paced back and forth, his voice raised so all could hear. “Aimed shots are what counts,” he told them. “There’s more air out there than meat. Another thing. I want you to forget all you may have heard about the sound of a weapon’s discharge doing the killing. It doesn’t knock people down. A man has to hit what he aims at with a bullet to stop an enemy,”

  “But, Señor,” one youthful beginner protested, “I have seen with my own eyes how a bandido has fired off his gun, into the air, and a man fell dead.”

  “Was there more than one bandit around?” Smoke probed.

  “Oh, sí. Our village was full of them.”

  “Then someone else shot him,” Smoke concluded. “Watch. I’m going to fire five shots into the air. Keep your eyes on those clay targets.”

  Smoke used his right hand Colt to discharge five rounds into the air. In the silence that followed, the students looked at the undamaged pot shards. Then he holstered his empty weapon and pulled the left hand .44 in a cross-draw. This time he fired at the targets.

  Five of them disappeared in puffs of dark red dust. “You have to hit what you shoot at to have any effect.”

  “But, Señor, those were only clay pots, and broken ones at that. They do not have the fragile soul of a man.”

  Smoke Jensen suppressed a groan. Whatever got him into this, he could do well without it. For the remainder of the morning, he continued his instruction. When it ended, some of the men, those with rifles particularly, complained of soreness. Smoke wondered how, with his limited Spanish, he could explain the effects of recoil.

  “It seems to me,” one of the more talkative volunteers offered, “that a gun punishes at both ends.”

  “You’ve sort of got the idea there, Juan,” Smoke told him. “It’s a natural reaction, called recoil. Those of you who work cattle, or use a hoe and shovel have strong hands. I doubt you felt much.”

  Heads nodded in agreement. Smoke favored them with a smile. Most had been able to at least nick their targets by the end of the session.

  “We’ll do more of this tomorrow. Now it’s time to eat.”

  Halfway through the meal, a rider fogged into town, his horse well-lathered, tail streaming behind flying hoofs. He reported to Martine.

  “We have found them, Don Miguel.”

  “Good. Where?”

  “There is this wide, deep valley. Up in the mountains to the west. It is not easy to find, for there are no trails.”

  “Except for the one Carvajal’s men made going there,” Smoke suggested.

  The scout flushed slightly. “Sí, that is true. You know the peak called Cabesa de Borrego?” This he directed to Martine.

  “Yes, the Sheep’s Head. Is this camp far from there?”

  A shrug. “Perhaps three leagues to the north, then into the Sierra. The trail is harder to follow in the mountains. We are used to looking for stray cattle, not men who can be clever and hide their tracks.”

  “I understand, Hector,” Martine informed him. “You have done well.”

  “And I think it’s time to go get a look at Carvajal,” Smoke Jensen suggested.

  “You will take some of the men?” Carbone asked.

  “No. I can move faster and have less chance of being seen if I go alone.”

  “This man is dangerous,” Martine protested.

  “That’s something we can agree on,” Smoke told him. “I’m only going to watch, learn. They’ll not see me. I’ll be in the mountains and right at home.”

  Carbone and Martine sighed and wished their friend well. Smoke wiped up the remainder of his meal with a tortilla and set aside the glazed clay plate. He rose and went to where Sidewinder had been stabled. In ten minutes he had completed his preparations. An old woman came to him with a cotton cloth sack that bulged with its contents and smelled delightful.

  “You will need something to eat. Vaya con Dios, Señor.”

  Moved by her sacrifice in the face of the destruction of her village, Smoke nodded, thanked her and swung into the saddle. He secured the sack by a thong on the skirt and edged Sidewinder out of the half-collapsed barn. At a brisk canter, he soon disappeared from view.

  Cookfires flickered randomly among the small army of bandits in the hidden valley, secure in the folds of the Sierra Madre Occidental. At the largest, an elaborate pavilion had been erected. It resembled one of those fancy tents depicted in medieval paintings. Pennons fluttered from the spike-topped center pole and from each corner. It was square, about twenty feet on a side, with a scalloped overhang from the roof.

  Inside, a painted hanging divided the tent into private sleeping quarters and a rudimentary office. A trestle table and huge, throne-like chair occupied most of the public area. Gustavo Carvajal sprawled in the seat of honor, his face illuminated by candles in wrought iron sconces, rammed into the ground before the flooring had been laid out. Yellow light reflected from the rings that adorned each of his fingers.

  “They are beautiful, no?” Carvajal raised his hands and waggled them to show off some of the booty taken from Merced. “This one was taken from the padre. He squealed like a pig when Montez ripped it from his hand. Said it was his ordination ring. Too bad, no?”

  “They are nice,” Humberto Regales said tactfully. “But don’t you think they might get in the way of your gun hand?”

  “¿Que? Why would I need to use a gun? I have all these fine warriors to protect me. Now, what of the loot taken from the church?”

  “The door to the tabernacle,” Ignacio Quintero declared proudly. “It is heavy, of pure gold. Also the chalices, gold and silver. There is much gold and jewels from the statue of Our Lady. A bag of coins.”

  “How much?” Carvajal demanded.

  “We have yet to count them, Excellency.”

  “Do so. Right now.”

  Quickly his three lieutenants stacked the coins according to their value and totaled them. Quintero raised his eyes to El Rey with a light of greed burning in them. “Five hundred pesos, Excellency. Not a fortune, but plenty for so small a village church.”

  “Go on.”

  “There are crosses of gold, and other items, perhaps two thousand pesos worth.”

  “What about the rest?” Carvajal snapped, impatient.

  “Outside, Excellency,” Tomas Diaz informed him. “There are bolts of cloth, boots, saddles, tools, ammunition, liquor, and … women. Fifteen young women, Excellency.”

  “How young?”

  “From twelve to twenty-five, none have started to go to fat.”

  Carvajal smiled. “I will take my pick later. Then the men can have the rest. Tell me, the youngest ones. Do they have pleasant shapes? Nice …” His hands described a pair of breasts. “… nalgas?”

  Regales gave a snort of disgust. “They are shaped more like boys, Excellency. There are others, s
till tender, that will please you, I am sure.”

  “Well, then, on with it. How much do you value the things taken from the village?”

  “I would say at least twenty thousand pesos,” Regales estimated. “We can use the food and ammunition; there were no guns that we found. The rest can be sold, the money used to pay the men. With those torros we sold, we are able to keep ahead of expenses for at least three months.”

  “Good. I like to hear that. We will grow stronger, you know. Men are coming to us nearly every day. They know where the power lies.”

  “What plans do you have for Martine y Garcia’s other villages, Excellency?”

  Carvajal leaned back in his throne, a small smile playing over his face. “We must wait and see about that,” he stated flatly. “After all, the burro may see the light now and give in. It is much easier to collect tribute than to wrest it from the hands of the peons.”

  “Safer, too,” Ignacio Quintero observed.

  Carvajal and his band of ruthless predators were about to find out how much safer when Smoke Jensen arrived in the area. It had taken him until mid-morning the next day to reach the craggy granite outcropping called Sheep’s Head. He halted there, munched on cold tortillas and beans, some dried, powdered beef, called machaca, washed down with long draughts of water. He rested Sidewinder, then changed out of boots into soft moccasins and a dark green shirt and tan vest. Then he stowed his hat in a saddlebag.

  He wound a green and brown bandana around his head and studied the results in the reflection from a stream that meandered out of the mountains ahead. Satisfied he would better blend with the terrain, he turned Sidewinder northward, to parallel the lofty range of the Sierra Madre.

  Nightfall caught him an estimated half league from the turning point. Smoke made a cold camp and soon dropped into a light, trail sleep. Through the night, he marked the chomp of Sidewinder eating grass, the occasional swish of his tail and stomp of a hoof. Nothing else disturbed the mountain man’s rest. He awakened refreshed, a vague demand for coffee teasing in his head. He would have to forgo that pleasure, Smoke ruled. With dawn spreading pinkly out of the east, he saddled Sidewinder and rode on.