Deadly Trail

by William W. Johnstone

  MATT JENSEN: THE LAST MOUNTAIN MAN

  DEADLY TRAIL

  William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Copyright Page

  Notes

  Prologue

  County Courthouse, Cedar Creek, Colorado

  “Here ye, hear ye, hear ye! The sentencing is about to be announced. All rise for the Honorable Felix J. Crane presidin’,” the bailiff shouted. “Everybody stand respectful.”

  The Honorable Felix J. Crane came out of a back room. After taking his seat at the bench, he adjusted the glasses on the end of his nose, then cleared his throat.

  “Would the bailiff please bring the accused before the bench?”

  The bailiff, who was leaning against the side wall, spit a quid of tobacco into the brass spittoon, then walked over to the table where the defendants, Clyde Payson and Garvey Laird, sat next to their court-appointed lawyer.

  “Get up, you two,” he growled. “Present yourself before the judge.”

  Payson and Garvey were handcuffed, and had shackles on their ankles. They limped up to stand, as best they could on busted knees, in front of the judge.

  “You two have been tried by a jury of your peers, and found guilty of the murders of Miss Margaret Miller, a beloved teacher of our children, as well as little Holly McGee, one of her students. For these two murders, you are sentenced to hang by your neck until you are dead,” Judge Crane said. He cleared his throat, then looked over at Matt Jensen, who was present in the courtroom.

  “Mr. Jensen, I regret that we could not find these two despicable creatures guilty of the murder of your family. While I have no doubt of your veracity, the court has only your account of the incident, and that account is your memory from when you were ten years old. However, though we could not find them guilty for that particular crime, I hope you can find some comfort in knowing that these two men will hang. And they will hang because you have brought them to justice.”

  “I am satisfied, Your Honor,” Matt said. He looked at Payson and Garvey. “You two will be dead,” he said. “And dead is dead.”

  “You go to hell, Matt Jensen!” Payson shouted. “Do you hear me? You go to hell!”

  “Silence that man!” Judge Crane said, banging his gavel.

  The bailiff signaled two deputies, and they stepped up quickly to gag Payson.

  “It is interesting that you would mention hell, Mr. Payson,” Judge Crane said. “Because, although I do not have the power to sentence you to hell, I will soon be passing you on to a higher judge who does have that power. And there is no doubt in my mind but that you will suffer eternal torment for the misery you have caused others during your stay on earth.

  “This court is adjourned.”1

  The sentence was carried out within two days, and nearly the entire town of Cedar Creek had turned out to watch. Some were there because they felt a need to see justice done. Many were there because of the morbid attraction of watching someone hang.

  One of the witnesses to the execution had walked up to Clyde Payson just a few minutes before they took him up onto the scaffold. Payson had not yet had the hood put over his head, so he could still see everyone in the crowd. When he saw the person staring at him so intently, he made a face.

  “What the hell are you looking at?” Payson demanded. “Who are you?”

  “Quiet Stream,” the man said.

  “What? Your name is Quiet Stream?”

  “You son of a bitch. You don’t even recognize the name, do you?”

  “Who is Quiet Stream?” Payson asked.

  “Do you not remember her?”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “She is an Indian woman that you once raped.”

  “Haw! I’ve raped a passel of women in my day, white and Injun. I’ve even had me a few coloreds, but I never bothered to learn their names.”

  The witness stared into Payson’s eyes until the prisoner was taken up onto the scaffold and the hood was drawn over the outlaw’s face. Then, just before the trapdoor lever was pulled, he called up to the prisoner.

  “Quiet Stream was my mother, you son of a bitch. I am your son.”

  “What? What did you . . . uhhn!”

  Payson’s last words were cut short as he dropped through the trapdoor and his neck was broken.

  Chapter One

  Two years later, Walkback Ranch, near Cuchara, Colorado

  The single lantern put out enough light to illuminate the bunkhouse, showing not only the sleeping accommodations in four sets of double-stack bunk beds, but also the walls, which were covered with newspapers and decorated with photographs and advertising posters.

  There were three men in the cabin, two sitting at a table playing cards, and a third who was cooking something in a pot that sat on top of a little wood-burning, potbellied stove.

  Pete, one of the men at the table, looked over at the man who was cooking their supper. Making a face, he waved his hand in the front of his nose. “What the hell is that you’re a’cookin’ over there, anyhow, Dumey? It smells like skunk.”

  “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to,” Dumey replied as he stirred the pot. “You can always rustle up your own grub.”

  “Hell, I didn’t say I wasn’t goin’ to eat it,” Pete said.

  “There didn’t nobody figure you wasn’t going to eat it,” Shorty said. Shorty was the other man at the table. “You bitch about the food, but when the time comes, you’re always the first one there.”

  “Well, it’s better’n starvin’ to death,” Pete said.

  Dumey laughed. “They’s a lot of ways you might die, Pete, but from the looks of you, starvin’ to death ain’t one of’em.”

  Pete and Shorty laughed at Dumey’s observation.

  “But it makes you wonder why Matt Jensen always finds some reason to go into town whenever it’s your turn to cook,” Pete said.

  “He don’t always go into town whenver I’m cookin’,” Dumey replied.

  “Really? Well, it seems like he does.”

  “Do you fellas know who Matt Jensen is?” Shorty asked.

  “What do you mean do we know who Matt Jensen is? Are you saying he ain’t Matt Jensen?” Dumey asked.

  “No, that’s exactly what I am tellin’ you,” Shorty said. “He is Matt Jensen.”

  “I swear, Shorty, you ain’t makin’ one lick of sense. First you say do we know who Matt Jensen is, then you say he is Matt Jensen,” Dumey said.

  “Yes,” Shorty said. “He is Matt Jensen. The real Matt Jensen, the gunfighter.”

  Dumey laughed. “No, he ain’t. He may have the same name and all, but there ain’t no way he’s the one that’s been wrote about in them dime novels.”

  “Yes, he is,”
Shorty insisted.

  “Now, you tell me why Matt Jensen, I mean the Matt Jensen, would be workin’ as a ranch hand for twenty and found,” Dumey said.

  “I don’t know,” Shorty said. “I just know it’s the same one, that’s all.”

  “What the hell, Shorty. Are you goin’ to gab all night, or are you going to play cards?” Pete asked. “Are you in, or out?”

  “I’m in, I reckon, but I can’t bet more’n one match,” Shorty said. He slid a match into the little pile in the middle of the table.

  “Whoa! One whole match!” Pete teased. “Well, I’ll just raise you five matches.”

  “Damn, what are you doin’, buyin’ the pot?” Shorty asked, throwing in his cards.

  “It’s called smart poker,” Pete said, taking the match and adding it to the stack of matches that were already in front of him.

  “What are you plannin’ on doin’ with all them matches anyway?” Shorty asked.

  “Hell, I thought ever’body knew that already,” Pete answered. “What I aim to do is win all the matches in the whole bunkhouse so’s Dumey can’t cook no more. Then we won’t have to worry none about being poisoned.”

  “Ha! Like you’re worried,” Shorty said. “Don’t you pay him no never mind, Dumey,” he said over his shoulder to the cook. “You know him. He’d eat the north end of a southbound mule while it was still walkin’.”

  “Well, I hope he would,” Dumey said. “‘Cause that’s just what I’m cookin’.”

  Dumey’s comment drew a laugh from both Pete and Shorty.

  Outside the bunkhouse, a rider stopped on a little hill overlooking the ranch and ground–tied his mount, then moved about thirty yards forward to the edge of the hill. Crouching, he looked down toward the bunkhouse. He could see three men through the window, two sitting at a table and another one standing close by.

  From this distance, he couldn’t tell which one was Matt Jensen, but it didn’t matter. He would kill them all.

  The rider raised his rifle and took slow, careful aim. The targets were well illuminated by the lantern that burned brightly inside the bunkhouse.

  Squeezing the trigger, he sent out the first bullet.

  Shorty heard the tinkle of glass, as if something had been tossed through the window, and he looked up in surprise and curiosity. Behind him, Dumey let out a little grunt of pain, spun around once, then fell to the floor.

  “What the hell you doin’ Dumey?” Pete asked. “Did you taste some of your own food?” Pete laughed at what he thought was a joke.

  “Boys, I been shot!” Dumey gasped.

  The laughter died in Pete’s throat as another bullet crashed through the glass window, smashed some crockery, then careened off the iron stove, projecting lead splinters and shards of glass like miniature bursts of shrapnel.

  “My God! My God! What is it! What’s happening?” Shorty shouted.

  Pete rolled off his chair, dropped to the floor, then crawled over to the window while yet another bullet crashed through the little shack. When he looked out the window, he saw the muzzle flash.

  “Somebody’s shootin’ at us!” Pete yelled, but there was no one left to hear him, for when he looked back inside, he saw that the other two were already dead.

  Pete knew he had to get out of there, or he would be dead too. The walls of the bunkhouse were so thin that they couldn’t stop the bullets. The only protection they could offer would be to mask Pete’s movement. Using that to his advantage, Pete managed to tear out a couple of boards from the floor. As soon as the hole was big enough, he crawled through it to get to the ground below the cabin. He felt the dank coolness of the dirt, smelled its odor, and breathed a small prayer of thanks that he had come this far without being hit. Whoever was shooting at the cabin did not realize that Pete had slipped away, for the bullets continued to crash through the cabin overhead.

  Lifting up his head just enough to see where he was going, Pete slithered on his belly to the back of the bunkhouse, opened the door, then rolled down into a small depression that allowed him to move, undetected, several feet away. There, he was able to let himself down into gully that was deep enough for him to stand. And standing, he started running without looking back.

  Matt Jensen was on his way back to the ranch when he heard the shooting. Because of the effect of echoes, however, he couldn’t be sure of the direction from which the shooting was coming. He climbed to the top of a large rock outcropping while the firing was still going on to see if he could find out. Then, far to the west, he saw the muzzle flashes. He knew that it was at the Walkback Ranch, but he didn’t know who it was, or why they were shooting.

  Matt remounted and started toward the ranch. Within a minute, he met Pete, who was running in the opposite direction.

  “Pete, hold up! What’s going on?”

  “Don’t go to the ranch!” Pete called back. “Some madman is shooting up the place. He’s already killed Dumey and Shorty.”

  Matt slapped his legs against the side his horse, then urged him into a full gallop, which was dangerous on this ground and in the dark. But he knew that Spirit was an exceptionally agile horse, and he counted on the animal to negotiate the trail without incident.

  By the time Matt reached the ranch, the shooting had stopped. He swung down from his horse in front of the big house.

  “Mr. Kincaid!” Matt called. “Mr. Kincaid, it’s Matt Jensen! Are you in there?”

  “Is the shooter gone?” a voice called from the darkness of the house.

  “Yes, sir, I believe he is,” Matt said. “Is anyone hurt in there?”

  The front door opened and a tall, thin man with white hair and beard stepped out onto the porch.

  “We’re all right in here,” Kincaid said. “For some reason, all the shooting was directed at the bunkhouse.”

  Drawing his pistol, Matt moved through the shadows of the towering aspen trees, alongside the barn, and finally to the bunkhouse, which was nearly one hundred yards away from the main house.

  Matt approached cautiously, dashing across the last open area, then pressing himself up against the side of the bunkhouse. The windows facing the tree line were all shot out, and there were bullet holes in the wall. Because of that, it was easy to determine that the shooting had come from the hill beyond the corral.

  “Shorty, Dumey?” Matt called. “It’s me, Matt. Anyone alive in there?”

  When Matt didn’t get a response, he moved to the door, but didn’t go inside. Instead, he looked through the door and saw both Shorty and Dumey lying on the floor.

  The interior of the cabin was still illuminated by the lantern and, using the light thus provided, Matt was able to make a thorough inspection of the cabin, making certain no one was lying in wait for him.

  After satisfying himself that that was the case. Matt stepped inside the cabin, where he moved quickly to check on the two cowboys. He knew, even before he reached them, though, that both Shorty and Dumey were dead.

  To Matt’s surprise both men, in addition to the wounds in their body, had very precise wounds in their forehead, as if the shooter had come into the cabin purposely to finish them off.

  That was when he saw a single .50-caliber bullet on the table, in the middle of a spread of cards and a pile of matches. Wrapped around the .50-caliber bullet was a piece of paper, held in place by a strip of rawhide. Matt untied the rawhide and opened the piece of paper. The paper had a name, and a strange symbol.

  MATT JENSEN

  Shorty Caldwell and Chris Dumey were being buried in a plot at the Walkback Ranch. Neither one of them had family that anyone knew about, and when Dwight Kincaid had asked the other cowboys what they thought about the idea of burying the two men at Walkback, they’d all agreed that Shorty and Dumey would probably appreciate being buried on the ranch where they’d worked and had friends.

  Cowboys and friends of the two men had come from adjacent ranches as well as the nearest town to attend the funeral. Everyone was wearing his finest clothes for the fune
ral, and they all were now standing alongside the two open graves, heads bowed, hats in their hands. They were waiting for Matt and Mr. Kincaid to join them.

  Matt was alone in the bunkhouse because all the others were outside. He sat on the edge of his bunk and just stared, morosely, at the floor.

  At the other end of the bunkhouse, the door opened and Kincaid came in.

  “Is it true you’re planning on leaving us?” Kincaid asked.

  Matt nodded.

  “There’s no need for you to do that, you know.”

  “Shorty and Dumey are dead because someone came after me,” Matt said. “I have no right to put others in danger like that.”

  “You don’t know that the shooter was after you,” Kincaid said.

  “My name was only name the shooter left.”

  “Do you have any idea who it might be?”

  “No,” Matt said.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Matt. When you first came here, I went into town to ask the sheriff about you. He said you have a sterling reputation—that you have never killed anyone who didn’t need killin’.”

  “That’s right,” Matt said. “But it turns out that those people all seem to have brothers, or cousins, or fathers, or sons who want revenge. I have no idea who this was, but I suspect it is someone bent on revenge. And people like that don’t always care who gets in the way. No, sir, I think it would be better if I moved on.”

  Kincaid nodded. “All right,” he finally said. “I hate to see you go, but I can see your point.” He reached out to shake Matt’s hand. “You’re a good man, Matt,” he said. “As fine a man as I’ve ever known.”

  “I appreciate that, Mr. Kincaid. Now, I reckon it’s time to go say good-bye to my friends, living and dead.”

  Kincaid nodded. Then the two men left the bunkhouse and walked back to the cemetery plot where the burial party was waiting.

  After the burying, Matt said good-bye to Pete and the others. Then he mounted Spirit and rode off. He was about ready to leave the ranch anyway, though he would have preferred to leave under different circumstances.