Betrayal of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “I know my rights,” Yancey insisted. “I’m your prisoner. That means I got a right to have a doctor treat me.”

  “All right, I’ll get the doc down here for you,” Turnball said. “I ought to tell you, though, he likes to amputate. More’n likely he’ll chop that finger clean off. Maybe even your hand.”

  “What?” Yancey gasped. He stepped back away from the bars. “Uh, no, never mind. She done a good enough job on me. I won’t be needin’ no doctor.”

  “I didn’t think you would,” Turnball said.

  Pearlie and Cal were laughing at Yancey as they left the marshal’s office.

  “You know what, Miss Sally? With your reward money and what we have, there’s almost enough money to save Sugarloaf right there,” Pearlie said.

  “Yes, there is.”

  “I tell you this. The trip back home tomorrow is going to be a lot more joyful than it was when we started out yesterday,” Cal said.

  “It would be if we were going back home. But we aren’t going to Sugarloaf yet,” Sally said.

  “Where are going?”

  “We’re going to find Smoke.”

  “How are we going to find him? I mean, where will we start?” Cal asked.

  “We’ll start in Dorena,” Sally said. “First thing tomorrow, after we collect the reward money.”

  “Do you think Smoke is the one who killed Dooley?” Cal asked.

  “I’d bet a thousand dollars he was,” Sally said.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Smoke looked back over his shoulder as he led the horse across the swiftly running stream. The horse was carrying Fargo’s body, belly down, across his back. The horse smelled death and he didn’t like it one little bit.

  Stormy and Fargo’s horse kicked up sheets of silver spray as they trotted through the stream. Smoke paused to give them an opportunity to drink. Smoke’s horse, Stormy, was a smart horse and knew from experience that he should take every opportunity to drink when he could. He put his lips to the water and drank deeply, but Fargo’s horse just tossed its head nervously. The horse was obviously anxious to get to where it was going so it could rid itself of its gruesome cargo.

  Smoke reached over and patted Fargo’s horse on the neck a few times.

  “Hang on just a little longer, horse,” Smoke said gently. “If what they told me back in Dorena is right, it won’t be much longer, then you’ll be rid of your burden.”

  The horse whickered, as if indicating that it understood.

  “Come on,” Smoke said when Stormy had drunk his fill. “Let’s be on our way.”

  Sheriff Fawcett was sitting at his desk with a kerosene lantern spread out before him. He was cleaning the mantle when Sally, Pearlie, and Cal stepped through the door. Seeing a beautiful woman coming into his office, the sheriff smiled and stood.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “I hope you can help me find my husband,” Sally said.

  The smile left, to be replaced by a troubled frown. “Is he missing?”

  “Well, not missing in that he is lost,” Sally said. She smiled to ease his concern. “He is missing in that I don’t know where he is.”

  “You think he is here in Dorena?”

  “I think he has been here,” Sally said. “His name is Kirby Jensen, though most people call him Smoke.”

  “Jensen?” Sheriff Fawcett said. “Jensen? Wait a minute. I just heard something about someone with that name.” He walked over to a table that was up against the wall and started shuffling papers around. He picked up a yellow sheet of the kind that was used for telegrams. “Here it is,” he said. He read the message; then his face grew very concerned and he looked up at Sally.

  “Did you say Jensen was your husband?”

  “Yes. My name is Sally Jensen.”

  “And you are looking for him?”

  “I am.”

  Sheriff Fawcett shook his head and sighed. “Well, evidently, so is every lawman in Colorado,” he said. He held up the paper. “According to this, he is an escaped prisoner, convicted of murder and robbery.”

  “No, he ain’t!” Cal shouted in a bellicose voice.

  “Cal,” Sally said, holding up her hand as if to calm him down, “it’s all right.” She maintained her composure as she smiled at the sheriff. “What my young friend is trying to say is that the wanted notice has been rescinded.”

  “It’s been what?”

  “It has been canceled,” Sally explained. “Marshal Turnball, back in Etna, sent out telegrams rescinding the notification that my husband was a wanted man.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “’Cause Smoke wasn’t guilty, that’s why,” Cal said, his voice holding as much challenge as it had earlier.

  “It seems that one of the bank robbers was caught,” Sally said.

  “Ha! It wasn’t the law that caught him. Tell the sheriff who it was that caught ’im, Miss Sally,” Pearlie said.

  “She caught him,” Cal answered, pointing proudly to Sally. “She caught ’im, and we took him in and got a reward for him.”

  “His name was Buford Yancey,” Sally said.

  Sheriff Fawcett nodded. “Yancey,” he said. “Buford Yancey. Yes, I’ve heard that name. He’s a pretty rough customer, all right.”

  “He ain’t so rough now,” Cal said. “He’s over in Etna behind bars.”

  “And he has not only confessed to the robbery,” Sally said, “he has also confessed that my husband was not involved. The actual bank robbers framed him so people would think he was guilty.”

  “And you say that word has been sent out to all the law agencies around the state calling back the wanted notice?” Sheriff Fawcett asked.

  “He was supposed to have sent word out by telegraph,” Sally said.

  Again, Fawcett began looking through all the papers on his desk. After a moment or two of fruitless search, he shook his head.

  “I’m sorry. There’s nothing here.”

  “What about your telegraph service? Is your line still up?”

  “As far as I know it is,” Fawcett answered. “If you’d like, Mrs. Jensen, we could walk down to the telegraph and check this out.”

  Sally nodded. “Yes, thank you, I would like that,” she said.

  The four walked from the sheriff’s office down to the Western Union office. The group was unremarkable enough that no one paid them any particular attention as they passed by, other than to take a second glance at the very pretty woman who was obviously a stranger in town.

  The little bell on the door of the Western Union office caused the telegrapher to look up. He stood when he saw the sheriff, and smiled when he saw the pretty woman with him.

  “Can I help you, Sheriff?”

  “Danny, have you got any telegrams you haven’t brought down to my office yet?” Sheriff Fawcett asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” the telegrapher said. “I didn’t think there was any rush to it, so I hadn’t gotten around to it yet.”

  The telegrapher picked up a message from his desk, then handed it to Sheriff Fawcett. Fawcett read it, then nodded.

  “You’re right, Mrs. Jensen,” he said. “Your husband is no longer wanted.”

  “Except by me,” Sally said. “I have to find him. You see, he doesn’t know that he is no longer a wanted man.”

  “I see. And you are afraid of what he might do while he thinks he is wanted?”

  “I’m sure that whatever he does will be justified by the law,” Sally said. “For example, I am sure that he killed a man called Ebenezer Dooley right here in your town.”

  Sheriff Fawcett shook his head. “No, that was a man named Kirby. We have eyewitnesses who say they saw Bill Kirby engage Ebenezer Dooley . . . in self-defense, I hasten to add . . . and shoot him down.”

  “Was he a big man with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, blue eyes?”

  “Well, yes, that sounds like him, all right,” Sheriff Fawcett said.

&nb
sp; “That’s him.”

  “So his name isn’t Kirby?” Sheriff Fawcett asked. Then he stopped in mid-sentence and chuckled. “Wait a minute, I get it now. He’s calling himself Kirby from Kirby Jensen, right?”

  “That’s right,” Sally said. “Did you say you paid him a reward?”

  “Yes. Dooley had a five-hundred-dollar reward on him.”

  “Seven hundred fifty,” Sally corrected.

  “No ma’am, it was only five hundred,” Sheriff Fawcett said.

  “Dooley was one of the bank robbers,” Sally explained. “The town of Etna added two hundred fifty dollars to the reward.”

  “Uh, Mrs. Jensen, if you are asking me to pay the additional two hundred fifty dollars, I got no authority to do that,” the sheriff said.

  “I don’t need the money from you, just your verification that my husband is the one who killed Dooley.”

  “Well, uh, I don’t know as I could actually . . .” Fawcett began, but Sally interrupted him.

  “Is this the man?” she asked. She was holding an open locket in her hand, and Fawcett leaned down to look at the picture. He studied it for a moment, then nodded.

  “Yes, ma’am, that’s him all right,” he said.

  “You’ll write the letter validating that he is the one who killed Dooley?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’ll be glad to do that,” the sheriff said. He smiled. “I’ll do better than that. Danny,” he called to the telegrapher.

  “Yes, Sheriff?”

  “Send a telegram to the city marshal in Etna, Colorado,” he said. “In the message, say that Kirby Jensen is the man who killed Ebenezer Dooley. As this was a justifiable killing, there are no charges against Jensen, and he was paid a reward for bringing Dooley to justice. Then put my name to it.”

  “Yes, sir,” the telegrapher said as he sat down to his instrument.

  “You know,” the sheriff said with a smile. “Now that I know who you are talking about, I think I might even be able to help you find him. At least, I can tell you where he went from here.”

  “Where?”

  “Bertrand,” the sheriff answered.

  “How far is it to Bertrand?”

  “Well, there are two ways to go. Some folks go through Diablo Pass because the pass isn’t quite as high. But most folks go through McKenzie Pass, which is about ten miles closer.”

  “Thanks,” Sally said.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  After several hours of riding on a bumping, rattling, jerking, and dusty stagecoach, the first view of Bertrand could be quite disconcerting to its passengers. Especially to someone who had never seen the town before. Experienced passengers were often called upon to point out the town, for from the top of the pass it looked like nothing more than a small cluster of the brown hummocks and hills common to this country.

  Five years after founding the town, a saloon keeper named John Bertrand was shot down in the street of his own town. The drunken drifter who killed him was lynched within an hour of his foul deed. Now, without the entrepreneurial spirit of its founder, the little town was dying, bypassed by the railroad and visited by the stagecoach but two times per week. Its only connection to the outside world was a telegraph wire, and though it was recently restrung, even it had been down for most of the winter.

  Smoke stopped on a ridge just above the road leading into Bertrand. He took a swallow from his canteen and watched the stage as it started down from the pass into the town. Then, corking the canteen, he slapped his legs against the side of his horse and sloped down the long ridge, leading the horse over which Fargo’s body had been thrown.

  Smoke was somewhat farther away from town than the coach, but he knew he would beat it there because he was riding down the side of the ridge, whereas the coach had to stay on the road, which had many cutbacks as it came down from the top of the pass.

  Smoke passed by a sign that read: WELCOME TO BERTRAND. Behind it, another sign said: THE JEWEL OF COLORADO.

  Smoke wasn’t at all sure that the person who wrote that sign was talking about the same town he was riding into about then. He didn’t see much about the little town that would classify it as the “Jewel of Colorado.”

  Two dirt roads formed a cross in the middle of the high desert country. The town consisted of a handful of small shotgun houses, and a line of business buildings, all false-fronted, none painted. The saloon was partially painted, though, with LUCKY NUGGET painted in red high on its own false front.

  As he rode into town, the fact that he was bringing in a corpse caused him to be the center of attention. Several people, seeing him, began to drift down the street with him to see where he was going.

  Smoke was heading for one particular building, identified by a black letters on a white board sign that said:

  TATUM OWENS, Sheriff.

  Bertrand, Colorado.

  By the time he reached the front of the sheriff’s office, more than twenty people had gathered around. Even the sheriff had come out of his office, summoned by someone who had run ahead to tell him about the strange sight of someone riding into town bringing with him a dead body.

  As Smoke dismounted and tied Fargo’s horse to the hitching rail, Sheriff Owens lit his pipe.

  “Did you kill ’im?” the sheriff asked around the puffs that were necessary to get his pipe started.

  “I did.”

  “I figure you must think you had a good reason to kill ’im,” the sheriff said. “Otherwise, you would have left him.”

  “He was trying to kill me,” Smoke said.

  “Sounds like reason enough,” Sheriff Owens said. “And if there ain’t nobody to back you up, there ain’t nobody here to say any different. What you plannin’ on doin’ with him?”

  “I figured the sheriff’s office was as good a place as any to leave him,” Smoke replied.

  “Would you happen to know his name?”

  “I don’t know his last name. But I heard him called Fargo,” Smoke said. “He robbed a bank in Etna,” Smoke added.

  The sheriff nodded. “Ah, then that would be Fargo Masters.”

  Smoke looked up in surprise.

  “How do you know that?” he asked.

  The sheriff nodded. “The telegraph is up again, and word come through this mornin’ tellin’ about the robbery. It also named all the robbers, and put out a reward of two hundred fifty dollars for each one of them. That means you’ve got money comin’, if we can prove this is who you say he is.”

  “What if I show you the money he had on him?” Smoke asked.

  “You got the money from him?”

  Smoke nodded. “From him, and from Ebenezer Dooley.”

  “If you’ve got the money, I’d say that’s pretty good proof.”

  “Sheriff, what do you want me to do with the body?” a tall, skinny man asked. His long black coat and high-topped hat identified him as an undertaker.

  “Find a pine box for him,” the sheriff said. “If nobody claims him within a few days, you can bury him.”

  “Is the town going to pay?”

  “Five dollars, Posey,” the sheriff said. “Same as with any indigent.”

  “Sometimes the town don’t pay,” Posey complained as he took the horse by the reins and started leading it down the street to the mortuary.

  “I admit we’re late sometimes,” Owens called after Posey. “But when you get down to it, we’ve always paid.”

  Having satisfied their curiosity as to who the corpse was, most of the gathered townspeople began moving away. The coach that Smoke had seen several minutes earlier was just arriving in town now, and it pulled to a stop at the stage depot, which was next to the sheriff’s office.

  “Hey, Walt, how was your trip?” the sheriff called up to the driver.

  “The trip was fine, no problems,” Walt replied as he set the brake and tied off the reins of his six-horse team. “Folks, this is Bertrand!” he called down.

  The door to the coach opened and the passengers stepped outside. One of them
glanced over toward the sheriff, then seeing Smoke, smiled broadly.

  “Why, Smoke Jensen!” the passenger called over to him. “What are you doin’ here? You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?”

  Smoke knew the passenger only as Charley. Charley was a salesman who from time to time had come into Longmont’s Saloon when he was in Big Rock.

  Smoke considered pretending that he didn’t know what the passenger was talking about, but decided it would be less noticeable to just respond and get it over with.

  “Hello, Charley,” Smoke said. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “No, Big Rock isn’t my territory anymore,” Charley replied. “But I sure had me some friends over there. Listen, when you get back over there, you tell Louie Longmont and Sheriff Carson that ole Charley Dunn said hi, will you?”

  “Sure, Charley, I’ll do that,” Smoke replied. He was aware that Sheriff Owens was staring hard at him.

  “You’re Smoke Jensen?” the sheriff asked. “Is your real name Kirby Jensen?”

  “Yes,” Smoke said. He poised for action. He didn’t want to kill the sheriff, but he wasn’t going to go back to jail either. Especially for a crime he didn’t commit. “Oh, then you must’ve already got the word. Otherwise, you’d still be running.”

  “I’ve already got the word?” Smoke asked. “Got what word?”

  “Why, that you’ve been cleared,” the sheriff said. “That message that come in this morning also canceled the wanted notice that went out on you.” Owens laughed. “But, since we didn’t have a telegraph line through to anyplace else until just the other day, we wasn’t gettin’ much news anyway. I found out that you was wanted and not wanted on the same day.”

  Smoke smiled broadly. “Well, that’s good to know, Sheriff,” he said.

  “So, what are you going to do now? Go back home?” Sheriff Owens asked.

  Smoke shook his head. “You say there is a two-hundred-fifty-dollar reward for every one who took part in the bank robbery?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s good to know,” Smoke said. He smiled. “It’s also good to know that I don’t have to worry about you wanting to lock me up while I go about my business.”