Butchery of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “Well, now,” John said with a broad smile. “That certainly makes the endeavor worthwhile.”

  “It does, indeed, my friend, it does indeed. I tell you what. If we survive the winter, we’ll go to Rendezvous come spring,” Smoke said.

  “If we survive the winter?” John replied with a bit of a start in his voice.

  Smoke laughed. “Most likely, we will,” he said.

  “What is Rendezvous?”

  “They aren’t quite as big now as they were back when Preacher was younger, but they are still fun to go to. They are almost like a county fair. Merchants come from the east to sell supplies, whiskey, books, candy, and such. There’s music, and generally some women around for dancing. There’s shooting contests and knife- and ax-throwing contests. And it’s a place where you can sell all the skins you’ve managed to trap in the past year.”

  “Where is it held?”

  “A different place every year. I guess we’ll find out from some of the other trappers.”

  It was one week later when the two saw their first Indians. There were six of them, all mounted, and painted up.

  “I was afraid of that,” Smoke said.

  “What?”

  “Pawnee. They’ve been following us for the better part of an hour. I thought, or maybe I was just hoping, that they would go on their way. But now they’ve showed themselves to us, I don’t think they have any intention of leaving.”

  “Are the Pawnee friendly?”

  “Not friendly enough so’s you can count on it,” Smoke said.

  “You think they’re going to attack us?”

  “Yeah, I think maybe they are. You were in the war, so I reckon you can use that long gun.”

  “Yes, I can use it,” John said.

  “Problem is, you’ve got a lot of range and hitting power with that Sharps, but you’ve got to reload it after every shot.”

  “Then I shall just have to make every shot count, won’t I?” John replied.

  The six mounted Indians let out loud war whoops, then, slapping their legs against the sides of their horses, they started galloping toward Smoke and John. Smoke and John stood their ground.

  “Now would be a good time to make one of those shots count,” Smoke said, and he no sooner spoke the words, than the big, large-bore Sharps boomed loudly beside him. John rolled back from the recoil of the big rifle, but one Indian was knocked down from his horse, and, even from here, Smoke could see the fountain of blood that gushed forth from the strike of the heavy, .50 caliber bullet.

  Smoke had a lever-action Henry and he fired once, jacked a new shell into the chamber, and fired a second time. Within less than five seconds the attacking Indians had seen their number cut from six to three. Now, only three, they realized that they no longer had a substantial numerical advantage. The remaining Indians hauled back on the reins so hard that the horses nearly squatted down on their hindquarters. They turned and started galloping away.

  Because the Sharps was a breech-loading weapon, and not a muzzle-loader, John had managed to reload more quickly than Smoke had anticipated. John raised his rifle to his shoulder to take aim.

  “No, John, don’t shoot!” Smoke said, reaching out to push the barrel of John’s rifle down before he was able to pull the trigger.

  John looked at him in surprise.

  “We’ve got them on the run. By not shooting, we are shaming them as they are running from us; we are showing them that we don’t fear them.”

  “What if they come back?”

  “They won’t come back today.”

  Boulderado Hotel, Boulder, Colorado

  The university had put Smoke and Sally up in the finest suite in the hotel, or, as the hotel advertised it: “seven hundred square feet of pure luxury.” The suite, consisting of a living room, dining room, and bedroom, was on the corner so that there was an excellent view of the city.

  Sally was sitting on a leather sofa in the living room, her legs folded up to her side, reading a Saturday Evening Post magazine when Smoke came in.

  “Finished already?” she asked.

  “Just for the day,” Smoke said.

  “How is it going?”

  “It’s going well, I think. He has me talking into a microphone, and my words are being recorded on a record, just like the ones you play on the Victrola, only I’m not singing,” Smoke said with a smile.

  “Too bad. I’ve heard you crooning. You have a good voice,” Sally said.

  “They played it back for me today, and I heard my voice. You should hear it.”

  Sally laughed. “Smoke, I’ve been hearing your voice for a long, long time now.”

  “Oh, yes, I guess you have. But I have to tell you that it did sound strange to me. It didn’t sound like me. The professor said it did, and he said the reason it sounded different to me is that we never really hear our own voice as others hear it. We hear by the waves caused by sounds in the air, but at the same time we also pick up the vibration of the bones in our skull.

  “That’s why, when I hear myself recorded and played back, it sounds completely different, because all I hear back from the recording is sound coming through the air, minus the skull vibration and bone conduction.”

  Sally laughed. “And you understood all that, did you?”

  “Yeah,” Smoke said with a crooked grin. “It might sound strange, but it makes perfect sense to me.”

  Sally got up from the sofa and kissed Smoke. “I’m proud of you,” she said.

  “What are you looking at in the magazine?”

  “An ad for a new car.”

  “A new car? You don’t like the Duesenberg?”

  “No, I love the Duesenberg,” Sally said. “I mean, for your truck.”

  “I’m not getting rid of my truck.”

  “Listen to this,” Sally said. She cleared her throat, then began reading the ad, as if reciting on stage.

  “‘Somewhere west of Laramie there’s a bronco-busting, steer-roping girl who knows what I’m talking about. She can tell what a sassy pony, that’s a cross between greased lightning and the place where it hits, can do with eleven hundred pounds of steel and action when he’s going high, wide, and handsome. It’s a hint of old loves, and saddle and quirt. The truth is, the Jordan Playboy is built for her.’”

  “What is that?” Smoke said with a puzzled expression on his face. “‘High, wide, and handsome, hint of old loves, saddle and quirt’? That says nothing about the car.”

  “I think the idea is to create a feeling,” Sally said. “I think the words are beautiful. And so is the car. Look at the picture.”

  Sally showed Smoke the ad.

  “Doesn’t look very practical,” Smoke said. “It only has one seat, and you can’t haul anything in it. I can’t see trading the truck for it.”

  “You’re right. Okay, keep the truck. Just buy the car.”

  “What if we wanted to go somewhere and take some folks with us? There’s no room in this car.”

  “Well, then we would just go in the Duesenberg,” Sally said.

  Smoke laughed. “So what you’re saying is we’ll have two cars and a truck?”

  “Smoke, don’t tell me we can’t afford it.”

  “I’ll tell you what we can afford. We can afford to have something good to eat. How about we order up room service for supper, and use this fancy dining room table?”

  “Oh, no,” Sally said. “We don’t get to come to a city that often. You’re taking me out, Kirby Jensen. And not for supper, for dinner.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Old Main Building

  “Are you ready to resume, Mr. Jensen?” Professor Armbruster asked the next morning when Smoke returned to the Old Main building on campus.

  “Yes, sir, I am,” Smoke said. “Where did I leave off yesterday?”

  “You and Jackson had just been attacked by six Pawnee,” Professor Armbruster said, “but you drove them off.”

  “So we did.”

  “Did you have any more
Indian encounters?”

  “Not immediately. We kept moving north until we left Colorado, then we wound up at Fort Laramie, in Wyoming.”

  “Laramie?”

  Smoke thought of the car ad Sally had read to him yesterday—“Somewhere west of Laramie”—and he smiled. “No, sir, we were at Fort Laramie,” he said.

  Fort Laramie

  When Smoke and John reached Fort Laramie, they were stopped by the guard at the front gate of the post.

  “What is your business here?” the guard at the gate asked.

  “We have no particular business, private,” John said. “We are just passing through and thought we would take shelter here for a couple of days.”

  “You’re both civilians, I can’t let you through.”

  “I realize that you can’t authorize our entry. But your post commandant can. So I’m asking you to call the corporal of the guard so that he may escort us to the post headquarters where we will secure permission from your commanding officer.”

  “The corporal won’t take you there.”

  “Oh, I think he will,” John said. “Army regulations twenty-two-dash-five specifically state that civilian personnel may be billeted on a military reservation under certain conditions where safety is concerned, and permission for such visits may be granted at any time by authority of the post commandant.”

  The guard looked at John with a shocked expression on his face, but he was no more shocked than Smoke.

  “Go ahead, Private, call him,” John said. There was an air of authority in John’s voice that Smoke had not heard before.

  “Corporal of the guard, front gate!” the private called.

  The other sentries repeated the gate guard’s call until, after a few moments a corporal came strolling up to the gate.

  “What is it?” the corporal asked.

  “Corporal, under the provisions of army regulations twenty-two-dash-five, my friend and I wish to petition the post commandant for permission to spend a few nights inside the fort,” John said.

  “I ain’t never heard of no regulation like that,” the private said. “Have you ever heard of it, Corporal?”

  “Of course I have,” the corporal replied. He stared at John and Smoke for a moment, then nodded. “All right, come with me.”

  “John, is there such a regulation?” Smoke asked, quietly, as they followed the sergeant across the open area toward the headquarters building.

  John chuckled. “I don’t have the slightest idea,” he said. “But it has gotten us this far.”

  Smoke laughed. “Yeah, it has.”

  “Wait here,” the corporal of the guard said when he led them into the orderly room. The first sergeant and the company clerk were both sitting at their desks.

  “Top, these men want to see the commandant,” the corporal of the guard said.

  The first sergeant gave Smoke and John a cursory glance, then nodded and stepped into the CO’s office. A moment later a major stepped out of his office. At first there was a rather irritated look on his face, but when he saw John, he broke into a wide grin.

  “Captain Jackson!” he said.

  “Lieutenant Sanderson,” John replied. “I haven’t seen you since Gettysburg. What happened to you? Other than the fact that you made major?”

  “I went to the hospital in Washington, D.C., and when I recovered, I was assigned to General Grant’s staff.”

  “Ha. I can see why you made major then. Oh, this is my friend, Smoke Jensen.”

  “Mr. Jensen,” Sanderson said.

  “Smoke, during the war Bobby Sanderson and I served together.”

  “Served together? Don’t you mean you were my commanding officer?” Sanderson replied.

  “Congratulations on making major, though I’m sure the congratulations are late,” John said.

  “What brings you to Fort Laramie?” Sanderson asked.

  “I’m in a new business now,” John said. “I’m a fur trapper, and my friend, who knows about these things, tells me that the best place to trap now is in Montana. So we’re headed up that way, and I thought you might be generous enough to put us up here for a couple of nights.”

  “Of course I will,” Sanderson said. “And you are here just in time to help us celebrate Independence Day.”

  “Independence Day? What day is this, anyway?”

  “July third,” Sanderson said.

  “Yes, we would love to celebrate the Fourth with you and the troops.”

  “First Sergeant, get these gentlemen billeted in the officers’ quarters,” Sanderson said.

  “Yes, sir. If you gentlemen will come with me?” the first sergeant invited.

  The first thing Smoke did after being assigned a room in the bachelor officers’ quarters, was to take a bath, and get into clean clothes. Although he had bathed in streams, this was his first real tub bath in over a year, and he sat in the tub for a long time, just luxuriating in the water. He heard a knock on the door.

  “Smoke? Smoke, are you in there?”

  “Yeah, John, if you don’t mind seeing me in the bathtub, come on in,” Smoke said.

  When John came in, Smoke was surprised to see that he was wearing the uniform of an army captain.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t even know I had this uniform with me, did you?”

  Smoke chuckled. “Hell, John, I didn’t even know you had ever been in the army. Let alone an officer. And a captain, no less. That’s pretty damn impressive.”

  “Not all that impressive. The army was huge during the war, and it required a lot of officers. Those of us who had college educations sort of had a leg up on the rest of the troops.”

  “Well, it impresses me,” Smoke said.

  “Bobby has invited us to his quarters for supper tonight,” John said. “I took the liberty of accepting the invitation for both of us. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, why should I mind? I never turn down a free meal. But I’m afraid the best I can do for clothes would be a buckskin outfit that’s clean, instead of the dirty one I’ve been wearing. Hand me that towel, would you?”

  “Your buckskins will be fine,” John said, handing Smoke the towel as he stepped from the tub.

  “I have to tell you, I’m a little out of place here, on an army post,” Smoke said. “I wanted to go to the war, but my pa and my brother went, and my sister ran off, so that left me to take care of ma.”

  “You would have been too young anyway, wouldn’t you?” John asked.

  “I could have lied about it.”

  “Well, for the time being, you and I will be trading places,” John said. “You have the lead when we are in the mountains; I’ll take the lead while we are here, on the army post.”

  “Sounds like the best way to handle it,” Smoke said.

  Major Sanderson lived in the commandant’s house, which was a rather large, two-story home with Corinthian columns supporting the porch roof. Smoke and John were met at the front door by an enlisted man who was Sanderson’s striker.

  “Come in, sirs, the major is expecting you.”

  “Thank you, Private,” John said.

  Major Sanderson and his wife were waiting in the parlor.

  “Hello, John. I would like you to meet my wife, Cindy.”

  John smiled. “You have done well, Bobby, both in your military career and your choice of a wife. What a lovely lady you have married. I’m most pleased to meet you, Mrs. Sanderson.”

  “Mrs. Sanderson,” Smoke said with a slight nod of his head.

  “I have heard much about you, Captain Jackson,” Cindy said. “It is good to finally meet you.”

  For the next half hour, and even after they were called to dinner, Smoke listened, with interest, to the stories John and Major Sanderson exchanged.

  “Were you in the war, Mr. Jensen?” Major Sanderson asked.

  “No, I missed it. My father and my older brother were.” Smoke smiled. “But I’m afraid they fought on the opposite side from you gentlemen.”

  “M
en of good conscience fought on both sides,” Sanderson said. “Who was your father with?”

  “He was with Mosby’s Raiders.”

  “Mosby? Wait a minute,” Major Sanderson said. “Jensen? Your father wouldn’t be Emmett Jensen, would he?”

  “Yes.”

  “My, what a warrior he was,” Sanderson said. “John, it was before I came to your company. I was on General Stoughton’s staff when Mosby’s Rangers showed up. Two men went into the general’s quarters and awakened him, most rudely I must say, by a slap on his rear. General Stoughton was incensed and, pulling himself up in righteous indignation, said, ‘Do you know who I am?’

  “One of the two men replied by saying, ‘Do you know who John Mosby is?’

  “‘Yes! Have you got the rascal?’ General Stoughton asked.

  “‘No, but he has got you!’ The two men in the room with the general that night were John Mosby”—Major Sanderson looked over at Smoke—“and your father.”

  John laughed out loud. “How did the men take it?” he asked.

  “I have to tell you, John, that General Stoughton was a pompous ass. The truth is, I think at least half the men applauded Mosby, and Emmett Jensen. Myself included,” he added.

  “Good,” Smoke said. “I wouldn’t want to make enemies from new friends.”

  John and Major Sanderson continued to discuss the war. The incident where General Stoughton was captured happened in March 1863. In May, Lieutenant Sanderson joined Captain Jackson’s company and fought under him in the greatest battle of the war, the Battle of Gettysburg.

  In Smoke’s young life he had already faced death many times, and smelled the acrid smell of gunpowder, so he was not unfamiliar with violent death. But the scale of Gettysburg, with thousands of men on either side facing shot and shell, advancing and withdrawing across battlefields strewn with the dead and dying, was enough to hold even his attention.