Bloodshed of the Mountain Man

by William W. ; Johnsto Johnstone

  He had been understrength when he raided Laurette, but despite that, the raid had been a great success. Before undertaking a similar operation at Brimstone, though, he wanted to be at full strength. He would wait until Rexwell had completed the recruiting campaign. That would also give him time to gather as much information as he might need about Brimstone.

  Satank, Colorado

  Behind the bar of the Silver Nugget Saloon in Satank, there was a sign that read NO CARD SHARKS ALLOWED. ALL GAMES MUST BE HONEST. CHEATERS WILL BE ASKED TO LEAVE THE PREMISES

  There was no gilt-edged mirror, but there were several large jars of pickled eggs and pigs feet on the bar, and towels, tied to rings, placed every few feet on the customer’s side to provide the patrons with a means of wiping their hands.

  The saloon had an upstairs section at the back, with a stairway going to a second-floor landing. When Bo Rexwell looked up, he saw that a heavily painted saloon girl was taking a cowboy up the stairs with her. He figured that after he finished his business here he might take one of the women up himself.

  He could afford it. He had never had as much money in his life as he had now since joining with the Ghost Riders. That had been his principal draw in recruiting. Hannibal had sent him out to find eight men to make up for the riders they had lost to Smoke Jensen. So far he had signed up seven of them: the Scraggs twins in Suttle, Snake Eye Mason and Bart Jennings in Hermitage, Emerson Case in Livermore, and Jeb Jones and Hock Granger in La Porte.

  Given the amount of money someone could make with the Ghost Riders, it wasn’t hard to find people who would ride with them. But Hannibal had given him the assignment because he knew that Rexwell wouldn’t settle for just anyone. Rexwell had exacting standards, and so far everyone he had recruited met those standards.

  There was a man here that Rexwell knew. His name was Vince Oceans and Rexwell and Oceans had been in the army together. They had also deserted together. Over the intervening years they had gone their separate ways—but he recently heard that he could find Oceans here in Satank.

  There were nearly a dozen tables full of drinking customers, three of which had card games in session.

  Rexwell bellied up to the bar.

  “What’ll it be?” the barkeep asked as he moved down to Rexwell. He wiped up a spill with a wet, smelly rag.

  “You got any good whiskey?”

  “Got some Old Overholt.”

  “That’s what you sell to wranglers and wagon drivers,” Rexwell replied. “What do you keep for bankers and those as can afford it?”

  “I’ve got some Irish whiskey, fifty cents for a shot.”

  “I’ll take a bottle.”

  “That’ll be ten dollars.”

  Rexwell slid the money across the bar to him. “I’m lookin’ for an old friend of mine. I heard I could find ’im here.”

  “What’s ’is name?”

  “Oceans. Vince Oceans.”

  “He’s a friend of yours?”

  “Yeah, you have a problem with that?”

  “Not a problem, just a wonder. Oceans isn’t the kind of man who makes very many friends.”

  “Well, is he here or not?”

  “Have a seat somewhere ’n enjoy your whiskey. He’ll be in, by ’n by.”

  Rexwell turned to look out over the room. A bar girl sidled up to him then. She was heavily painted and showed the dissipation of her profession. There was no humor or life left to her eyes, and when she saw that Rexwell wasn’t interested, she turned and walked back to sit by the piano player.

  The piano player wore a small, round, derby hat and kept his sleeves up with garters. He was pounding away on the keyboard, but the music was practically lost amidst the noise of a dozen or more conversations.

  “Barker!” someone shouted, and looking toward the door he saw a man with a full, black beard. This was the man who had called out the name. “Barker, you son of a bitch! Are you in here?”

  Rexwell smiled. He hadn’t recognized Oceans at first, because of his beard. But he recognized his voice. He started to get up, when he saw another man stand.

  “I don’t want any trouble with you, Oceans,” Barker said, holding out his hand.

  “Well you got trouble, Mister. I heard what you said about me. Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”

  “I take it back.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “Come on, Oceans, I was just tryin’ to look big. I didn’t really mean nothin’ by it.”

  “Draw,” Oceans said.

  “No, I ain’t goin’ to draw on you.”

  Oceans drew and fired, and there was a collective gasp in the room as they thought he had shot Barker. What he had actually done was clip one of Barker’s earlobes, and now Barker was holding his hand to his ear, as blood streamed through his fingers.

  “Draw,” Oceans said again.

  “No, I ain’t goin’ to draw on you!” Barker said.

  Oceans fired again, this time hitting his other earlobe.

  “Please! No more!” Barker shouted.

  “The next one is going to be between your legs,” Oceans said.

  “Ahhhh!” Barker shouted, as he made a desperate grab for his pistol.

  Oceans stood there with a triumphant smile. He waited until Barker got the pistol from his holster before he drew again. Then Oceans drew, fired, and put his pistol back in his holster before Barker was able to raise his gun. Barker fell facedown on the floor and lay there without moving.

  So stunned was everyone in the saloon, that there was absolute silence in the place, no conversation and no piano playing.

  “Vince,” Rexwell called.

  The black-bearded man looked toward the call.

  Rexwell held up the bottle of expensive Irish whiskey. “Come over and have a drink with an old friend.”

  “I’ll be damned if it ain’t Bo Rexwell. I heard you was dead,” Oceans said.

  Within half an hour, Vince Oceans became Rexwell’s eighth recruit and the newest member of the Ghost Riders.

  Denver

  Marvin Thigpen stepped into the Silver Palace Saloon and saw the man he was looking for. Boots Cardigan was sitting alone, at a table in the back. Thigpen started toward him.

  “I’ve got some information that might interest you,” Thigpen said.

  Cardigan took a drink before he responded.

  “What is it?” he asked in a low, gravelly voice.

  “It’s about Kirby Jensen,” Thigpen said as he sat across the table from him.

  “Kirby Jensen? I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Well, he must be pretty good, or Governor Adams would never have appointed him to this position.”

  “What position?”

  “Colorado Rangers.”

  “Now why the hell would I be interested in the governor appointing someone to the Rangers? What’s one more Ranger?”

  “This is different,” Thigpen said. “Jensen is going to be a Colorado Ranger, but separate from them. He has one job, and that’s going after the Ghost Riders.”

  “One man plans to take on the Ghost Riders? All by himself?”

  “Actually there will be two of them. Jensen and another man named Pearlie.”

  Thigpen took the copy from his pocket and gave it to Cardigan. Cardigan read it, then looked up.

  “Where is he now? This Jensen fella?” Cardigan asked.

  “I don’t have any idea where he is.”

  Cardigan looked at the paper again, then handed it back to Thigpen, who folded it and returned it to his shirt pocket.

  “Is Hannibal supposed to be afraid of this Jensen and someone named Pearlie?”

  “They must be capable, or the governor would not have appointed them to this special commission.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m just quaking in my boots.” Cardigan laughed. “Boots Cardigan quaking in his boots. That’s a good one, don’t you think?”

  “Is what I told you worth ten dollars?” the clerk asked.

  “A dollar, m
aybe,” Cardigan said handing the informer a bill.

  “A dollar? I risked my position to tell you about this and all it’s worth is a dollar?”

  “Look, if I was to go back there ’n tell them that they need to be careful because two men are after ’em, ’n one of ’em is named Pearlie, I’d more ’n likely be laughed plumb out of the state. What the hell kind of man calls hisself Pearlie? Take the dollar or don’t take it.”

  “I’ll take it,” Thigpen said, reaching for the proffered bill.

  “Yeah, I thought you might.”

  “Oh, oh, speak of the devil,” Thigpen said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s him, that’s Jensen! He just came in!”

  The man Thigpen pointed out was a big man, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He was wearing a tooled-leather gunbelt around his waist, with cartridge-bullet-filled loops all the way around. His pistol, with a plain wooden grip, was holstered low and tied down on his right side. When he came into the saloon he moved immediately, but unobtrusively, to the side of the swinging batwing doors and putting his back to the wall, perused the saloon.

  “Look at ’im,” Cardigan said. “The dumb bastard doesn’t have an idea in hell what is about to happen to him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m goin’ to call him out.”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  “Yeah, well, you ain’t me,” Cardigan said.

  “I’m leaving,” Thigpen said.

  “Don’t leave. Stick around for the show. But I would advise you to get out of the way. You wouldn’t want to be hit by a stray bullet now, would you?”

  “No,” Thigpen said. “No, I would not.”

  Thigpen got up from the table and walked away, but his morbid curiosity kept him from leaving. Instead, he chose a table in the farthest corner of the saloon, then sat there with his hands clasped in front of him.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Thigpen’s quick departure from the table didn’t go unnoticed by Smoke. Perhaps if he had gotten up and left the saloon, Smoke would have thought nothing of it. But he didn’t leave the saloon, and he purposely chose a table as far away from where he had been sitting as he could. What made it even more intriguing was the fact that the table he chose was empty, and the table he left had a half-finished mug of beer in front of where he had been sitting.

  Smoke looked at the man who was still sitting at the first table. And though the man pointedly looked away when Smoke glanced toward him, it was obvious to Smoke that the man had been studying him.

  He was used to people recognizing him and then staring at him. He was a well-known personality, and people looked at him to satisfy their curiosity. But he also knew what it was like to be measured as a target, and that was exactly what was happening now.

  Smoke had survived many gunfights over the years, not only because he could draw faster and shoot straighter than anyone who had ever tried him, but also because he had an innate sense about him, a gut instinct when someone was about to try to kill him. And he felt that now.

  Smoke walked over to the bar, and though it may have looked to the casual observer, or even to Cardigan who was studying him, that he had no interest in him, nothing could be further from the truth. Smoke found the man in the mirror and, without being too obvious, kept his eye on him.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Jensen, what can I get for you? Same as last time?”

  “Hello, Mr. Stallings, yes, a beer, thank you.” Smoke had come into the Silver Palace for a beer when he first arrived in Denver.

  “Yes, sir, I’ve been telling my customers that the great and famous Smoke Jensen had a beer here.”

  Smoke chuckled. “Isn’t that laying it on a little thick?”

  “Oh, no, it’s good for business,” Stallings insisted. He drew a mug of beer then set it on the bar in front of Smoke.

  Smoke, purposely, didn’t reach for the beer until Stallings was well out of the way. He had been keeping an eye on the man at the table, and the more he studied him, the more he was certain that he was going to make a play.

  Smoke not only knew that the man was going to draw on him, he knew exactly when it would be. The man would wait until he had the maximum advantage, not only of surprise, but when Smoke’s gunhand was occupied. What the man didn’t know is that Smoke wouldn’t be surprised, and it made no difference if his gunhand was occupied or not.

  Smoke picked the beer mug up with his right hand.

  “Draw, Jensen!” the man shouted, standing up from the table with the pistol already in his hand.

  Smoke dropped the beer mug, drew, and fired before the mug even hit the floor.

  The man fired as well, but his pulling of the trigger was nothing but a reflexive action, muscle memory in the finger of a dead man, and the bullet poked a hole in the bar. Boots Cardigan fell back into his chair even before the sound of the two gunshots had faded away. He sat there, his head slumped over, his lifeless arms hanging by his side, and the pistol still clutched in his hand.

  Seeing what had just happened, Thigpen got up to leave. He was shocked when Smoke swung his still-smoking pistol toward him.

  “Stay right where you are, Mister!” Smoke called out to him.

  Thigpen stuck both hands in the air. “I’m not armed! I’m not armed!” he shouted, his voice breaking with terror.

  “Put your hands down,” Smoke said, holstering his pistol. “Get over here.”

  Nervously, Thigpen walked toward Smoke while the others, not yet over the shock of the sudden death that had taken place right before their eyes, now watched this side drama play out before them. What did Smoke Jensen want with this meek-looking man?

  “Who was that man?” Smoke asked.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Thigpen said.

  “You were at the table with him, but got up to move when I came in. You knew he was going to call me out, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Mister. I can’t stand a man who lies to me.”

  “I . . . uh . . . told him not to.”

  “Wait a minute,” Smoke said. “I saw you a little while ago, didn’t I? Yes, you were in the capitol building.”

  “I never go into the capitol building.”

  “That’s a bald-faced lie, Thigpen,” Stallings said. “You work there.”

  “Well, uh, I—” Thigpen stopped in midsentence, and Smoke saw the edge of an onionskin protruding from his shirt pocket.

  “What do you have in your pocket?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what Thigpen has in his pocket,” one of the other saloon patrons said. “But look what I just found in this feller’s pocket.” He held up a red armband.

  “A red armband,” someone said. “Ain’t that what them Ghost Riders wear around their arm?”

  Smoke reached over to Thigpen and grabbed the folded piece of paper from his pocket. When he unfolded it, he wasn’t surprised to see that it was the copy of the commission the governor had written out for him.

  “What are you doing with this?” Smoke asked.

  “I’m a file clerk. I was going to file it,” Thigpen said.

  “After you showed it to him?”

  “I didn’t show it to him.”

  “You’re lyin’, Thigpen,” one of the other men in the saloon said. “I seen you and that man talking a while ago, ’n I seen you show him that piece of paper.”

  By then a couple of Denver uniformed police officers had come into the saloon. “We heard shootin’ in here,” one of them said.

  “Yes,” Stallings said. “That fella over there,” he pointed to Cardigan’s body, which was still sitting in the chair, “drawed on Smoke Jensen. It was a fatally foolish thing for him to have done.”

  “Smoke Jensen is here?” one of the policemen asked.

  “That’s him,” Stallings said, pointing to Smoke.

  “Officer Givens, you might be interested in this,” the patron who had discovered the red arm
band said. He held it up so the two policemen could see it.

  “I’ll be damned,” Givens said.

  “What was the man’s name, Thigpen?” Smoke asked.

  Thigpen didn’t answer.

  “If you’ve read that commission, you know that I have the authority to arrest you and put you in prison for accomplice to attempted murder,” Smoke said.

  “His name was Cardigan,” Stallings said. “He’s been a regular here, but I sure didn’t know he belonged to the Ghost Riders.”

  “I didn’t know Cardigan was going to draw on you. I just thought he was going to tell Hannibal about it,” Thigpen said. “Really, I didn’t have any idea he was going to try ’n kill you.”

  “Do you know where I can find Hannibal? Are he and his gang here, in Denver?”

  “No,” Thigpen said. “At least I don’t think so.”

  “Then, what was Cardigan doing here?”

  “Cardigan wasn’t actually a member of the gang. That is, he didn’t ride with them.”

  “How do you know that?” Givens asked.

  “Well, I know for a fact that he was here during the thing that happened at Laurette.”

  “That’s true,” Stallings said. “Cardigan was here then.”

  “Are you part of the gang?” the other policeman asked Thigpen.

  “No!” Thigpen answered, sharply.

  “Then what were you doing with Cardigan?” Smoke asked.

  “I don’t have anything to do with the gang itself, but from time to time I would deal with Cardigan. I gave him information, and he paid me for it.”

  “How much did you get for showing him this?” Smoke asked, holding out the piece of paper.

  “He gave me a dollar for it,” Thigpen said in a small, weak voice.

  “So, what you are saying is, you made yourself an accessory to attempted murder for one dollar?”

  “I didn’t know he was going to try and kill you! I swear I didn’t know!” Thigpen said in a pleading voice.

  “Mr. Jensen, you want to put him in jail?” Givens asked.

  Smoke shook his head. “No. Let him go. He might be of some use to me, later.”

  “Thank you, thank you! And, yes, sir, whatever you want me to do, Mr. Jensen, I’ll do it,” Thigpen said. “Yes, sir, you can count on me.”