The Sugarloaf filled up most of a long, broad valley bordered by mountains. Melville Peak was about a mile to the north of the ranch headquarters. Smoke frowned as he thought that the big cat was getting a little too close to home.
All fall, the hands had been catching glimpses of an abnormally large panther that came down out of the mountains to raid the herds two or three times a month. A few of them had taken shots at it but missed, and others had tried to track the predator back to its lair. The big cat was elusive, though. He showed up out of nowhere and seemed to vanish the same way.
Not surprisingly, the panther’s success had emboldened it, made it more daring. It had been coming closer and closer to headquarters. It had struck again, only a mile away. That bothered Smoke. He didn’t want Sally to step outside some morning on her way to the chicken house to gather eggs, only to be confronted by several hundred pounds of snarling, killer beast.
“I reckon we’re going to have to do something about this,” he said.
“That’s just what I was thinkin’,” Pearlie agreed. “The three of us’ll go up into the mountains, take enough supplies for a few days, and not come back until we’ve done found that varmint.”
“He’s got to have a den up there somewhere,” Cal added.
Smoke nodded in agreement with that. “The only thing wrong with what you said, Pearlie, is that there’ll just be two of us going—me and Cal.”
Pearlie looked surprised as he said, “You’re gonna leave me here?”
“Somebody’s got to keep the ranch running.”
“Shoot, at this time of year, there ain’t much to that. The place’d be fine for a few days without me.”
“I’d like to think so, but you never know when trouble will crop up. I’ll just feel better if I know you’re here to keep an eye on things.”
Sally said, “I don’t like the idea of you leaving right before Christmas, Smoke.”
“It’s still a while until the big doings in Big Rock,” he said. “We’ll be back well before then. In fact, I promise that if we don’t find that cat in a couple days, we’ll turn around and come back and pick up the hunt again after the holiday.”
“Well . . . in that case, I suppose I can’t complain too much.”
“Anyway”—Smoke grinned—“I wouldn’t take a chance on depriving Cal of Christmas.”
“That’s right,” Pearlie jumped in. “He’s still a growin’ boy. I’ll bet he plans on hangin’ up a stockin’ for Santy Claus to fill with goodies.”
“Aw, you two,” Cal complained. “I’m a full-growed man. I don’t believe in Santa Claus no more.”
“Question is, does Santy Claus believe in you?” Pearlie asked.
“Huh?”
“Just go get your gear ready and saddle a horse,” Smoke said. “We’ll ride out today. There’s still plenty of light left. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and be back tomorrow with that panther’s pelt.”
A little shudder went through Sally. “You be careful, Smoke. If that beast is big enough to drag off cows the way it’s been doing, it could do the same to you and Cal.”
“No, ma’am.” Cal shook his head. “No critter is gonna keep me away from that bear sign of yours, come Christmas Eve.”
A short time later, Smoke walked out of the house carrying his Winchester and a bag of grub and supplies that Sally had put together quickly, still wearing the dress she intended to wear to the Christmas Eve party in the settlement. It was a beautiful day, crisp and cool enough for his breath to fog in front of his face as he walked toward the barn where Pearlie and Cal were waiting for him with two saddled horses.
Smoke glanced at the blue sky, dotted here and there with white clouds. There was nothing threatening about it, but some instinct stirred inside him. Like a lot of Westerners, he had a feel for the weather, maybe a better one than most, and it wouldn’t surprise him if snow fell sometime in the next few days. Maybe he could smell it in the air.
“You still plan on me stayin’ here?” Pearlie asked as Smoke walked up.
“Yep.”
“Well, then, I reckon that’s what I’ll do. I’d rather be goin’ with you boys, though.”
Cal said, “Of course you would. A few days of huntin’ beats stayin’ here and working, doesn’t it, Smoke?”
“This isn’t an excursion,” Smoke pointed out. “That cat is dangerous. If we don’t put a stop to its prowling, it’s liable to come right up to the house before long.”
Pearlie nodded. “I kind of figured that’s why you wanted to find it. Reckon I’ll wish you good huntin’.”
Smoke tied the supplies to his saddle, which already had his bedroll lashed behind it. Then he and Cal swung up onto the mounts and headed out.
As they rode away from the ranch headquarters, Smoke frowned slightly and looked around, not seeing anything out of the ordinary, but he had felt something, a slight prickling on the back of his neck. That usually meant he was being watched.
He wondered suddenly if on this trip into the mountains, he was going to be the hunter—or the hunted.
CHAPTER 2
Pearlie had passed along to Smoke what the puncher had told him about finding the mangled carcass of a cow near the base of Melville Peak, so he had no trouble locating the grisly remains. He knew every foot of the valley and the surrounding mountains, having explored the area thoroughly in his younger days.
Those days really weren’t all that long ago, to be honest, but most of the time it seemed like he and Sally had always been together, had always been in the rugged paradise making a life for themselves.
“Dang,” Cal exclaimed as he and Smoke rode up to what was left of the cow. “Looks like that panther had himself a feast.”
“Yeah,” Smoke said, nodding gravely, “his belly ought to be full, that’s for sure. That means he’ll head back to his den and sleep for a while. Maybe we can find him before he wakes up.”
“You reckon you can follow the sign?” Cal asked, then laughed. “Shoot, that was a dumb question, wasn’t it? Of course you can follow the sign. You’re Smoke Jensen, the canniest tracker, the boldest fighter, and the fastest gun west of the Mississippi or anywhere else.”
Smoke frowned. “You haven’t been reading those dime novels again, have you, Cal? I told you, those are all just stories that some scribbler makes up. Wouldn’t surprise me if he is drunk while he’s doing it, either. I might not be able to stop them from writing about me, but I don’t have to read them and neither do you.”
“Well, no offense, but I sort of like the ones about Frank Morgan better, anyway,” Cal said as he thumbed back his hat. “He’s this gunfighter, folks call him the Drifter—”
“I know who Frank Morgan is,” Smoke broke in. He couldn’t stop a chilly edge from entering his voice. Morgan had a notorious reputation as a gun for hire.
“Oh, yeah, sure, I reckon you would. Have you ever met him?”
“No, I haven’t, and I swear, Cal, if you ask me which one of us I figure is faster on the draw—”
“Heck, there’s no doubt in my mind about that,” Cal said. “Nobody’s faster than Smoke Jensen.”
Smoke just grunted and turned his horse to ride around the bloody carcass. “Come on. We’ve got us a panther to tree.”
“You really think he’ll be up a tree?” Cal asked as he moved his mount alongside Smoke’s.
“That’s just an expression. More than likely he’ll be in a cave.” Smoke sure didn’t believe all the dime novel nonsense that had been written about him, but it was a fact that he was a pretty good tracker. Of course, he’d had the best teacher anybody could ever have in the person of the old mountain man Preacher.
He was still kicking, still quite active despite his advanced age, and if he had been there, he could have followed the panther’s trail as easily as if there had been signs posted showing the way.
As it was, Smoke had to search some for the paw prints, the broken branches, the overturned rocks, the occasional tuft of hai
r stuck on a tree trunk or a bush. The panther didn’t leave many such signs, but there were enough for Smoke to follow the trail. He just couldn’t hurry it, so the progress they made was on the slow side.
The trail led up the pine-covered slope toward the upper reaches of the mountain. The higher they went, the more the vegetation thinned out. The peak itself was above the tree line, gray and forbidding even on a sunny day, and topped with a white cap of snow.
Smoke wondered just how far up the panther’s lair was. Cats liked high places, so there was no telling.
They had been making their way up the mountainside for a couple hours when he said, “We’ll lose the light in another hour or so, Cal. We’d better start looking for a good place to make camp.”
“We won’t be gettin’ back to headquarters today, will we?” the young man asked.
“Nope. I didn’t really figure we would. That would’ve been just blind luck, if we’d found the varmint that fast. I’ll always take good luck when it comes along, but it doesn’t pay to expect it.”
Before the sun went down, they found a fairly level, open spot among some trees to make their camp. Smoke tended to the horses while Cal hunted up some firewood along with the rocks they would arrange in a circle to contain the blaze. Smoke had spent many a night under the stars, so it wasn’t anything new to him. Back in the days when he’d been riding the hoot owl trail with false murder charges hanging over his head, he’d made camp in a lot lonelier places.
They didn’t have to cook their supper as Sally had made sandwiches, placing thick slices of roast beef between slabs of sourdough bread. Smoke brewed coffee in the pot he had brought along, and they washed down the bread and meat with tin cups of Arbuckle’s. She had put several airtights in the bag of supplies as well, so he used his knife to open a can of peaches and split it with Cal for dessert, letting the young man drink the thick, sweet syrup left in the can.
After they had eaten, they sat next to the fire, enjoying the warmth cast by the merrily dancing flames. Neither looked directly into the fire. They knew doing so would make a man lose his night vision temporarily. With a killer cat loose on the mountainside, neither of them wanted that.
“It’ll be good to have you and Miss Sally home for Christmas this year, Smoke,” Cal said as he nursed a second cup of coffee. “Are either of your brothers gonna be here?”
“Not that I know of. The last letter I got from Matt, he was out in California and didn’t say anything about heading this way. I haven’t heard from Luke in a long time.” Smoke smiled faintly. “He was never much of one for staying in touch.”
That was putting it mildly. For many years, Smoke had believed his older brother was dead, killed in the last days of the Civil War. Luke had been betrayed by men who were supposed to be his friends and comrades—the same men ultimately responsible for the deaths of Smoke’s father Emmett, Nicole, and Arthur. Luke had survived that treachery and made a new life for himself, under a new name, as a bounty hunter during the violent days following the great conflict.
Finally, fate had brought the brothers back together. Not surprisingly, that reunion had seen a lot of hot lead flying around, and somehow, gunplay continued to be quite common whenever Smoke and Luke got together. Smoke would have been happy for his older brother to give up his wandering ways and settle down on the Sugarloaf, but he had a hunch that would never happen. Luke was just too fiddle-footed for that.
The same was true of Matt Jensen, their adopted younger brother. Even though he wasn’t a Jensen by birth, he had taken the name and had the same adventurous streak, the same natural ability with gun and knife and fists that a Jensen had to have in order to survive on the frontier. The same sense of honor and courage, too, Smoke was proud to say since he’d helped raise the youngster. The day might come when Matt decided to put down roots, but Smoke suspected it was still a long time in the future.
Those thoughts went through his head as he sipped the strong black brew in his cup, but they were jolted away suddenly by a harsh scream that ripped through the night.
Cal was so startled that he dropped his cup, causing what was left of the coffee to splash and sizzle in the campfire. He came halfway to his feet and exclaimed, “Lord have mercy! Was that—”
“Sounded like our panther, all right,” Smoke said, apparently not the least bit shaken.
“I thought you said he’d probably sleep in his den for a while.”
“Maybe he was hungrier than I thought, and he’s already out looking for another meal.” Smoke drained the last of his coffee and flung the grounds into the flames. He set the empty cup aside and stood up.
A few yards away, the two horses he had picketed earlier were skittish, thoroughly spooked by the big cat’s cry. Smoke moved over to the animals and quickly calmed them with a light touch and low-voiced words of reassurance. The horses responded to him, but if the panther let out another scream, they would be frightened again. It was pure instinct.
“That sounded like he was close, Smoke.” The young puncher was on his feet, holding his rifle.
“Maybe he thinks he’s hunting us, instead of the other way around.” Smoke’s thoughts went back to the feeling he’d had earlier when they were riding away from the ranch headquarters. That sensation of being watched had stayed with him, off and on, the rest of the day, but he had never spotted anyone spying on them. He didn’t think he could blame it on the panther, though. The creature had been far away the first time he had experienced that uneasiness.
“I’d better build up the fire,” Cal said as he reached for the pile of broken branches he had brought in earlier and dumped on the ground.
“Hold on,” Smoke told him. “That cat’s probably scented our horses. He might make a try for them, if he’s hungry enough, and if we let the fire burn down a little more.”
Cal frowned. “You mean to use ’em as bait?”
“I don’t like the idea,” Smoke admitted, “but I like even less, the idea of that killer prowling around the ranch. Here’s what we’ll do. Let’s fade back into the woods on both sides of the camp and keep an eye out for a while. If the panther makes a try for the horses, we should be able to pick him off.” Smoke lifted his head, tested what little breeze there was, and pointed. “You go in the trees over there.”
Cal agreed without hesitation. He always did whatever Smoke told him and would have even if he didn’t ride for the Sugarloaf. He had that much respect for the older man.
Carrying his Winchester, Smoke drifted like a phantom into the trees on the other side of the camp. He hoped the wind wouldn’t carry their scents to the panther. He leaned his shoulder against the trunk of a tree growing in front of a boulder that rose several feet above his head and settled down to wait. He had a good view of the fire and the horses from there.
The panther hadn’t screamed again, and the horses had gone back to cropping on the grass where they were picketed. Smoke had considered tying them to some trees, but he wanted them to be able to pull loose and at least have a chance to get away if the big cat reached them.
He didn’t intend to let that happen, however. He had the rifle ready with a bullet in the chamber and could bring it to his shoulder and fire in less than the blink of an eye. Even in poor light, his aim would be deadly accurate, too.
He heard a faint whisper of sound behind him and realized he had been outsmarted—or had outsmarted himself.
Either way, as he turned and looked up, he saw a sleek shape launch itself from the top of the boulder, fangs and claws poised to rip the life from him.
CHAPTER 3
Smoke’s lightning-swift reflexes might have been enough to save him, but before he could even bring the rifle up, a shot blasted. The big cat twisted in mid-air as a bullet tore through it. The panther’s momentum made it crash into Smoke anyway, but at least it was no longer trying to claw at him or rip his throat out with its fangs. As Smoke fell, driven off his feet by the impact, he shoved hard on the panther and sent it falling to the sid
e.
The cat thudded to the ground and didn’t move again. Smoke knew it was dead. The shot must have been a perfect one through the heart to kill the beast that quickly.
Smoke leaped to his feet and was about to call his congratulations to Cal for making such a shot, when he realized the sound of the blast hadn’t come from the other side of the camp. Whoever had fired was on his side. Once again, he remembered the odd sensations he had experienced since leaving the ranch headquarters earlier in the day.
The other rifleman might well have saved his life by killing the panther with that phenomenal shot—but that didn’t mean the hombre wasn’t a threat.
“Smoke!” That was Cal, from the far side of the fire. “Smoke, are you all right? Did you get him?”
Smoke didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to give away his position. He ghosted backwards into deeper shadows and waited for his rescuer—if that’s what the man was—to show himself.
Somebody close by chuckled, and then a voice raspy with age said, “You might as well come on outta there, youngster. I can see you, and if I’d wanted to shoot you, I’d have done it already. Or else just let that big ol’ varmint have you.”
“Preacher!” Smoke exclaimed.
A lean shape stalked out of the darkness into the faint light coming from the dying campfire. The man might have been mistaken for a panther himself, the way he moved with such dangerous, fluid grace.
The ease with which he carried himself belied his years, as did his erect stance. He was well into his eighties, but he could have been mistaken for a man much younger. He seemed to have stopped aging when he was around sixty years old. Smoke sometimes wondered if the old mountain man would still be around when he and everybody else he knew were gone.
“Smoke!” Cal shouted again. The young puncher was really starting to sound worried.
“It’s all right, Cal,” Smoke called back to him. “The panther’s dead.”
“I knew you’d get him!”
Preacher cleared his throat, and Smoke said, “It wasn’t me who fired that shot. We’ve got company. Come on back to the fire, Cal.”
A Colorado Christmas Page 2
