Shootout of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  One thousand miles east from the Cloverdale Jail, in the town of Big Rock, Colorado, a rather sizable crowd was watching a spirited horseshoe pitch. A tossed horseshoe hit the peg, made a loud clang, spun around the peg, then settled down.

  “Ringer!” Jason Whitman shouted. “Looks like Smoke beat you, Floyd.”

  “Damn,” Floyd said. “Smoke, is there anything you can’t do? ‘Cause if there is, I sure want to give you a go on it.”

  “Sally says I can’t knit worth a damn,” Smoke said.

  “Is that a fact? Well, I’ll tell you what,” Floyd said. “I believe I’ll just take up knittin’ so’s I can find somethin’ I can beat you at.”

  The others laughed at the barber’s lament. Floyd Carr had been the champion horseshoe thrower for Big Rock for three years running. He had about convinced himself that he was the best in the entire state of Colorado, and didn’t believe it when he was told by those who had seen Smoke throw horseshoes for fun out at his ranch that Smoke was better.

  Reluctantly, Smoke had taken up Floyd’s challenge, and had just beaten him in three straight games.

  Accepting the accolades of those gathered for the match, Smoke begged out of a celebratory drink at the Longmont Saloon by explaining that he had to get back to the ranch.

  “You mean you’d rather go back home than have a few drinks with your friends?” Whitman asked.

  “Whitman, that’s about the dumbest question I’ve ever heard,” Sheriff Carson said.

  “What’s so dumb about it?” Whitman asked.

  “What friends at Longmont’s are you talking about?”

  “Well, Louis will be there. Floyd will. You’ll be there too, I reckon. And I’ll be there.”

  “Uh-huh,” Carson said.

  “So?”

  “Think about it, Jason,” Carson said. “We’ll be at Longmont’s. Sally is at Sugarloaf.”

  “Oh,” Whitman said. “Oh, yeah, I see what you mean.”

  The others laughed, then shouted their goodbyes to Smoke when he swung into the saddle for the ride home.

  As Smoke rode by the Western Union office, the telegrapher stepped into the front door and called out to him.

  “Smoke, I’ve got a telegram here that’s addressed to Sugarloaf Ranch. It came late yesterday afternoon, and I was goin’ to get a boy to bring it out to your place today, but seeing as you are here, maybe you’ll take it.”

  “Thanks, I’ll take it.”

  “Yes, sir,” the telegrapher said. “The only thing is, it’s addressed to a fella by the name of Buck West, and I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of him. Do you know such a person?”

  The name Buck West got Smoke’s attention. For a while, Smoke had been on the dodge, and he’d used the name Buck West. There weren’t too many people around who knew about that part of his life. And certainly anyone who knew to send a telegram to Sugarloaf Ranch would know that he wasn’t using that name anymore. It made him very curious.

  Smoke gave the telegrapher a quarter, then stuck the telegram in his pocket. He planned to wait until he got back to the ranch before he read it, but curiosity got the best of him so, about a mile out of town, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the telegram.

  BOBBY LEE CABOT TO BE HANGED AUGUST 31 IN CLOVERDALE NEVADA STOP COME QUICK TO GOLD STRIKE SALOON MINNIE SMITH

  Bobby Lee Cabot had been Nicole’s half brother. He’d been younger than Nicole, she had partially raised him, and for a while Bobby Lee had even lived with Nicole and Smoke. Bobby Lee had practically worshiped the ground Smoke walked on, and Smoke remembered him fondly. He had no idea who Minnie Smith was, but if she had sent him a message addressed to Buck West, then he knew that it was authentic. She could only have been given that information by Bobby Lee.

  Smoke rode about another half mile toward home while he contemplated the message. He was glad that Bobby Lee had thought to contact him, because he was absolutely not going to let him be hanged—of that he was sure. What he was not sure about was what he was going to do to stop it.

  Then, with a smile, Smoke came up with an idea. But in order to make the idea work, he was going to have to ride back in town to visit the printing shop. Turning back toward town, Smoke slapped his legs against the side of his horse, causing the animal to break into a ground-eating lope. He reined up in front of the sheriff’s office, then stepped inside.

  “Smoke,” Carson called to him. “Come back to lord it over Floyd a bit, did you?”

  “No,” Smoke said. “I need a favor from you, Monte.”

  “Ask, you’ve got it.”

  Smoke explained his idea.

  “I don’t know, Smoke,” Carson said. “What you are asking for doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”

  “Will you do it?”

  “Yes, of course I will,” Carson said. “Just because it doesn’t make sense to me doesn’t mean it isn’t a bad idea. You’re one of the smartest men I know, so I figure you’ve probably got it worked out in a way I haven’t considered yet.”

  “Thanks,” Smoke said.

  Sheriff Carson wrote out a note, then handed to Smoke. “Show this to Curly,” he said. “And if he still has questions, tell him to come see me.”

  Curly Latham listened to Smoke’s request.

  “Let me get this straight,” the printer said. “You want me to print just one?”

  “One is all I need,” Smoke replied.

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Curly said.

  “Will you do it? Or do I have to go find another printer somewhere?”

  “Look here, Smoke, you know how this works. It will cost you as much to have me print just one as it would to have me print one hundred. You know I’m going to do it for you if that is what you really want. I just hate taking advantage of you like this.”

  “I know,” Smoke said. “But one is all I need. In fact, I very specifically do not want more than one printed. This isn’t something I want anyone else to see, and I can control it much better this way.”

  “What about the sheriff? What does Monte think about it?”

  “I stopped by to see Sheriff Carson before I came here. Here is a note from him,” Smoke said.

  Curly, please do as Smoke says. Just print one. Sheriff Carson

  Curly Latham shook his head in confusion. “All right, Smoke, if this is what you and the sheriff both want, I’ll do it. But I sure as hell don’t know what good just one of these things will do for you.”

  “Thanks, Curly. Oh, and would you put in an envelope and have it waiting for me at the sheriff’s office? I have to get back out to the ranch, but I’ll be taking the late train out tonight and I want to take this with me.”

  “It’ll be there waitin’ for you,” Curly promised.

  Sugarloaf Ranch, adequately timbered and well watered, with ample grass, was the culmination of all Smoke’s dreams and aspirations. But he had not always been the “gentleman rancher.” There was a time when he had ridden what many might call “the outlaw trail.” And while he operated with equal alacrity between law and lawlessness, he had never crossed the line between right and wrong. Of course, there were some things that he considered right that might be questioned by others, such as hunting down and killing the men who had killed his father, then going on the vengeance trail yet again to kill those who had murdered Nicole and his young son, Arthur.

  Most of the people who knew Smoke now thought they knew everything there was to know about him. But there were very few of his current acquaintances who knew there had been a wife before Sally. Smoke loved Sally, there was no denying that, but had Nicole not been murdered, he would have never even met Sally. Most of the time the shadows of his past remained just that, shadows. It served no purpose to bring those memories to the surface, but this telegram had done that.

  It was funny. He had just had a dream about Nicole, which was unusual in more ways than one. It was unusual because, though she still occupied a part of his heart, he had managed, quite successfully until
the dream, to put her out of his mind. And it was unusual because, in a way, his dream of Nicole seemed to presage this telegram from her brother.

  Was it just a coincidence? Or had the dream been a warning of what was to come? He knew that the Indians put great store in the power of dreams, and, for that matter, so did Preacher. He had always respected Preacher, and if Preacher felt that way about dreams, then he figured there might be something to it—but until this incident, he had never encountered the power of the “dream spirit.”

  When Smoke arrived at his ranch, he saw Pearlie sitting at an outside table just under a spreading oak tree. There was a saddle on the table in front of his foreman, and Pearlie was doing some repair work. A peal of laughter rang out from over by the little cluster of houses, where the families of some of his Mexican workers lived, and Smoke smiled when he saw Cal chasing after the laughing children as he swung a lariat over his head. In many ways, Cal was still a kid himself.

  Both Pearlie and Cal waved at him, and he returned their wave, then went into the big house.

  “Hello, darling,” Sally said, greeting him with a big smile. “How did you do at horseshoes?”

  “I won.”

  “I never had any doubt. By the way, I’m making a chicken pot pie for supper tonight. We’ll call it a celebration of your winning at horseshoes. I hope you are hungry.”

  “How soon can you have it ready?” Smoke asked.

  Sally laughed. “My goodness, I guess you really are hungry.”

  “No it’s not that,” Smoke said. “I have to catch a train tonight.”

  Sally’s expression changed from one of a smile to one of curious concern. “Is something wrong?”

  Smoke showed Sally the telegram. She read it, then looked up at him with a quizzical expression on her face. “You are going to Nevada?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a long way to go, isn’t it?”

  “Darlin', if they were about to hang Bobby Lee in China, I would go see what I could do to help.”

  “That brings up the next question. Who is Bobby Lee Cabot?”

  “He is Nicole’s brother,” Smoke said.

  Sally nodded. No further explanation was needed.

  “I’ll hurry supper, then I’ll pack your things,” she said.

  Although Pearlie and Cal frequently ate with the other cowboys, they were more like family than hired hands, so just as frequently they ate with Smoke and Sally. They especially did so on nights like tonight when Sally had gone out of her way to fix something special.

  It was Pearlie who noticed it first—Smoke’s saddlebags, neatly packed, as well as his rifle and canteen, over by the wall.

  “Are we going somewhere?” Pearlie asked, nodding toward the gear.

  “We aren’t,” Smoke replied. “I am.”

  “Wait a minute,” Cal said. “That ain’t right, Smoke. We always go as a team.”

  “That isn’t right,” Sally suggested.

  “See, even Sally agrees.”

  “I was correcting your grammar.”

  “Oh.”

  “Cal, this is something personal,” Smoke said. “Very personal. It concerns something that happened before you, before Pearlie, even before Sally.”

  “Well, yeah, but I mean—”

  “You heard him Cal,” Pearlie said, interrupting the younger cowboy. “Some things are, like Smoke said, personal.”

  Looking around, Cal saw the expressions on the other faces, and those expressions told him he was in the wrong.

  “Oh, uh, yeah, I see what you mean,” Cal said. “I’m sorry, Smoke. You go on by yourself if you want to. You won’t hear nothin’ else from me.”

  Sally drew a breath to correct his grammar yet again, but she left the words unspoken. She was not a schoolteacher anymore, and she had about decided that Cal was a lost cause anyway. Besides, he was obviously feeling rejected right now, so there was no need to add to his discomfort by more grammatical corrections.

  Smoke smiled at Cal. “I’m glad I have your permission.”

  “My permission? No, I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, of course you can go anywhere you want. You don’t never need my permission a’tall.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m glad to hear that.”

  Smoke laughed, as did the others, at Cal’s reaction. Smoke reached out and ran his hand through Cal’s hair.

  “I was teasing you, Cal,” he said. “Look, ordinarily I would want Sally, Pearlie, and you with me. But trust me, this isn’t a normal thing. Besides, you and Pearlie have that rodeo to go to, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah, I nearly forgot that.”

  “How can you nearly forget that?” Pearlie challenged. “We just been practicin’ for it for near a month now.”

  “Well, I didn’t really nearly forget it, I just nearly forgot it is all,” Cal said, as if his explanation made any sense at all.

  “Smoke has a train to catch tonight,” Sally said. “What do you say that any more conversation we have, we have while we are eating?”

  Chapter Six

  Sally, Pearlie, and Cal rode with Smoke into town. There, they stopped by the sheriff’s office to pick up the document Smoke had printed, then went on to the railroad station so they could see Smoke off on the train.

  “If you would, Charley, book me only on trains that have an attached stock car. I plan to take my horse with me.”

  “All right,” the stationmaster replied. He worked on the tickets for a few moments, then handed a packet of them to Smoke.

  “You’ll leave here at eleven tonight,” Charley explained. “You will arrive in Colorado Springs at one in the morning, where you will change trains, then depart Colorado Springs at two a.m., arrive in Cheyenne, Wyoming, at eleven tomorrow morning. Because you will need a stock car, you won’t be able to depart Cheyenne until three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Then comes the long ride, from Cheyenne to Battle Mountain, Nevada. You will reach Battle Mountain at eight a.m. the next day. I’m afraid you are going to have to spend the entire day in Battle Mountain, because you won’t leave until ten that evening. You’ll reach Cloverdale at eight o’clock on the following morning. It will be an all-night trip, but your passage should be quite comfortable, as the train is equipped with Pullman cars.”

  “It’s good to see that you have it all worked out for me,” Smoke said.

  “Oh, and Smoke, I don’t know how dependable the shipping people are at all these stations, so if I were you, I would keep an eye on your horse at each place.”

  “Thanks, Charley, I intend to,” Smoke replied.

  Tickets in hand, Smoke sat inside the depot with Sally and his two friends as they waited for the midnight special. It was called that, even though most of the time it was scheduled to arrive at about eleven.

  “What kind of a fella is this Bobby Lee?” Cal asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Smoke said. “He was not much more than a kid the last time I saw him, but he was as fine a kid as I’ve ever known. I’ve only heard from him once or twice since Nicole died. I think he rode shotgun on a stage for a while, and was a deputy somewhere up in Wyoming. I don’t know how he got to this place in Nevada, and I have no idea why they are about to hang him.”

  “Do you think he is innocent?” Cal asked.

  “I don’t know. But I don’t care whether he is innocent or not.”

  “You mean, even if he was guilty, you would go try to rescue him?” Cal asked.

  “I’m not going to try to do anything,” Smoke said. “I am going to do it.”

  “Cal, quit asking such dumb questions,” Pearlie said. “You mind how when I was in jail that Smoke come to rescue me?”3

  “Yeah, but you hadn’t been convicted yet,” Cal replied.

  “Do you think that would have mattered?”

  “No,” Cal said. “I don’t reckon it would have mattered. Smoke would have rescued you, just like he’s going to try to rescue this fella Cabot.”

  “I told you, there is no try about it,” S
moke said. “I’m going to do it.” He reached out to put his hand on Sally’s hand and looked deep into her eyes.

  As Smoke gazed deeply at her, Sally could almost look back in time to see the Smoke she had not known, the Smoke that had come before.

  “I know that you will,” Sally said.

  They heard the whistle of the far off train.

  “Sounds like the train is comin',” Cal said, stating the obvious.

  Smoke had checked his rifle through with his saddle, but he kept his saddlebags with him, and he reached down to scoop them up.

  “What do you say we go out onto the platform and watch that big beast roll in?” he suggested.

  “All right,” Sally answered.

  Smoke draped the saddlebags over his right shoulder, then put his left arm around Sally’s waist and pulled her closer. She leaned into him.

  “You’ve got nothing to be jealous about, Sally,” Smoke said quietly.

  “Oh, darling, I know that. I’m not in the least jealous,” Sally said. “I think the fact that you can still have such a feeling for Nicole even though she has been dead these many years is one of the reasons I love you so. It’s comforting in a way. It reassures me that if anything happened to me, you would still love me.”

  “Forever,” Smoke said, squeezing her more tightly.

  By the time they stepped out onto the platform, the train was already approaching the station with its big headlamp sending out a long beam of light ahead, catching hundreds of fluttering night insects in its glow. The exhaust valve was venting off the used steam so that huge puffy clouds of white swirled about the engine, reflecting in the platform lamplights so that they appeared to glow. The loud puffs echoed back from the sheer, red wall of Big Rock Cliff, just on the other side of the tracks. It was this cliff from which the town had taken its name. The bell clanged incessantly as the engine, a two-four-two, rolled up alongside them. The engine was so heavy that Smoke could feel the vibration in his stomach, and he saw small, burning embers dripping through the grates of the firebox and laying down a long, glowing trail to smolder between the tracks. The engineer was leaning on the sill of the cab window, eyes forward, with his hand on the brake valve.