Guns of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “Dammit!” Sheriff Silva said, getting to his boots. “I been shot twice in my life, and both times in the same damn arm!”

  “No, it ain’t over!” The scream came from up the street.

  Everybody looked. Pecos stood there, his hands over the butts of his fancy engraved .45s.

  “Oh, crap!” Smoke said.

  “Don’t do it, kid!” Carbone called from the boardwalk. “It’s over. He’ll kill you, boy.”

  “Hell with you, Carbone, you greasy son of a bitch!” Pecos yelled.

  Carbone stiffened. Cut his eyes to Smoke.

  “Man sure shouldn’t have to take a cut like that, Carbone,” Smoke told him.

  Carbone stepped out into the street, his big silver spurs jingling. “Kid, you can insult me all day. But you cannot insult my mother.”

  Pecos laughed and told him what he thought about Carbone’s sister, too.

  Carbone shot him before the kid could even clear leather. The Pecos Kid died in the dusty streets of a town that would be gone in ten years. He was buried in an unmarked grave.

  “If you hurry, Carbone,” Smoke called, “I think you could catch up with Martine. Me and him smoked a cigarette together a few minutes ago, and he told me he was going back to Chihuahua to visit his folks.”

  Carbone grinned and saluted Smoke. A minute later he was riding out of town, heading south. . . .11

  * * *

  Cal finished retelling the story both he and Pearlie had heard several times, and Pearlie grinned.

  “I can see why they both came so fast when Joey wired them Smoke needed help,” Pearlie said. “He let them live when most men would have shot ’em down or at least put ’em in jail.”

  Cal nodded. “That’s why Smoke has so many good friends. He don’t judge a man as bad by his reputation, only by how he is to Smoke. If’n someone don’t do him no harm, then Smoke’d just as soon let ’em be.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of hoofbeats coming toward them at a fast clip.

  Pearlie jumped to his feet, his gun in his hand. “Sounds like somebody’s comin’ in a hurry. We better be ready for trouble, Cal.”

  Cal pulled his pistol and the men went to peer around the boulder, trying to make out who was approaching in the darkness.

  “Yo, the camp,” called a voice they recognized as belonging to Joey.

  Pearlie and Cal holstered their weapons. “Come on in, Joey,” Pearlie called.

  He walked over to the fire and poured a fresh cup of coffee and handed it to Joey as he jumped down off Red.

  “Thanks,” Joey said, rolling the cup between his palms to warm them. “It’s gettin’ a mite chilly out there on the plain ’tween town an’ here.”

  Cal nodded. “That’s ’cause there’s nothin’ to break the wind comin’ down off’n the peaks of the mountains over yonder.”

  Pearlie, impatient to find out what Joey knew, interrupted. “Did you learn when Cain’s plannin’ on attackin’ the Sugarloaf?”

  Joey grinned a sly grin. “Yeah. Tomorrow or the next day. He’s waitin’ fer a wagonload of dynamite an’ gunpowder an’ ammunition to come in. Then he’s gonna make his play.”

  “That don’t give us much time,” Cal said.

  “You got that right, boy,” Joey answered.

  “You headed back to Fontana?” Pearlie asked.

  Joey wagged his head. “Nope. Done burnt my bridges there, boys. Cain must’a suspected somethin’, ’cause he had me followed to make sure I didn’t leave town.”

  “How’d you get away?” Cal asked.

  Joey patted his Arkansas Toothpick. “I just showed the man my blade, up close like, an’ then I got on Red an’ rode on out.”

  “Do you need to rest, or can we head for the Sugarloaf now?” Pearlie asked.

  Joey emptied his coffee cup. “Naw, I’m all right. Red is easy-gaited. Ridin’ him’s like sittin’ on a porch in a rockin’ chair. Let’s shag our mounts, boys. We’re burnin’ time, an’ we ain’t exactly got a surplus of it to waste.”

  As Pearlie and Cal saddled their horses, Cal looked over his shoulder and said, “By the way, Al Martine and Louis Carbone arrived the other day.”

  Joey smiled. “Good. They once said if Smoke ever needed ’em they’d come runnin’, but you never know if someone will really do it or not ’til you ask ’em.”

  “I don’t think they thought twice about it,” Pearlie said. “From the way they talked, they got on a train the same day they got your wire.”

  “It’ll be good to see ’em again,” Joey said. “Now, let’s quit jawin’ an’ ride!”

  25

  Lazarus Cain was enjoying his breakfast in the Dog Hole Saloon until Blackie Jackson approached his table.

  “I can tell by the look on your face you got bad news for me,” Lazarus said, spearing another piece of sausage and shoving it into his mouth.

  “That’s right, boss. I just got back from the hotel. Wells’s room is empty. He must’ve cleared out during the night.”

  “What about Boots Hemphill? He was supposed to be watching Joey. Where is he?”

  Before Jackson could answer, Lazarus pointed a finger at him. “If the bastard fell asleep and let Joey walk out of town, I’ll crucify him.”

  Jackson shook his head. “Hemphill’s missin’ too, Lazarus. I can’t find hide nor hair of him anywhere.”

  Lazarus washed down his food with a deep drink of coffee, then wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He got to his feet, pulled out his Colt, and banged on the table with its butt until he had everyone’s attention in the saloon.

  “Listen up, everybody. I want all of you to comb the town. Boots Hemphill is missing, and so is Joey Wells. I don’t have to tell you how much harder our job is gonna be if somebody tips Jensen off that we’re comin’ after him. Now, get lookin’!”

  He glanced up at Jackson. “Blackie, did you look in Hemphill’s hotel room?”

  “Yep. All his clothes an’ saddlebags an’ gear is still there. If he left followin’ Wells, or with him, he left all his belongings behind.”

  Lazarus rubbed his beard stubble for a minute, thinking. “That’s an idea. I want you to go check out the livery, see if Hemphill’s horse is still there. Seems there are only three possibilities of what happened.”

  “What’re those, boss?”

  “If Hemphill’s horse is gone it means he’s gone, either as Wells’s partner, or followin’ him like I asked. If Hemphill’s horse is still there, then he’s in town someplace, an’ we need to find him and ask why he didn’t stop Wells from leavin’.”

  “Yes sir.”

  After Blackie left, heading for the livery, Lazarus threw his coffee cup across the room in frustration. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was going right on this job. First, the wagon with the extra dynamite and ammunition was late in arriving, and now one of his best men had disappeared—either to warn Jensen, or just because he got impatient and wanted to be elsewhere. Lazarus knew it was crucial to his plans to find out why Joey had left. It would make a big difference in how he approached Jensen’s ranch if he knew they were coming.

  He walked over to the bar and poured himself a tall whiskey. To hell with coffee. The way things were going he needed something more substantial in his gut.

  * * *

  Blackie was back in less than an hour, the scowl on his face showing Lazarus the news wasn’t going to be good.

  “Well, is Hemphill’s horse in the stable?”

  “Yeah, an’ so is Boots.”

  “What do you mean, so is Boots? Why didn’t you bring him with you?”

  “’Cause I didn’t want to drag him the whole way over here, that’s why.”

  “You mean he’s dead?”

  “Deader than the cow that made his boots.”

  “How?”

  “Looks like he took a knife, a big knife, in the throat. He was hid in the hay an’ I’d never of found him ’cept the ground was muddy from all the blood he spilt.”r />
  “Damn!” Lazarus spit, slamming his hand palm down on the bar. “That means he must’ve caught Joey trying to leave, an’ Joey killed him.”

  Blackie nodded. “Most likely the way it went down, all right.”

  Lazarus cut his eyes to Blackie. “If Joey wanted to leave bad enough to kill to get out quietly, he must be plannin’ to tell Jensen what’s goin’ on.”

  “I’d bet my hoss on it.”

  “Call the men together. We’ve got to get movin’ before Jensen has time to plan a defense against us. Even if Joey warns him this mornin’ it’ll take him a few days to round up enough men to cause us any problems. If we get the ammunition wagon today, we can hit him tonight!”

  * * *

  Blackie had the entire gang assembled in the saloon within thirty minutes. Lazarus had them sit at the tables, while he stood at the bar, addressing them.

  He looked out over the crowd, thinking about the men he’d gotten involved in this.

  At one table sat seven men, all bank robbers and members of assorted gangs that read like a Most Wanted list. The leader of this particular group was Three-fingers Sammy Torres. He was a tall, over six-foot Mexican with a large mustache and smallpox scars on his face. It was said he’d lost the two fingers of his left hand in a fight, when his opponent bit them off. Torres reportedly made the man swallow them, then cut his throat and gut and reclaimed the digits. He carried the mummified fingers in a small leather pouch hung on a strip of rawhide around his neck.

  Two of his confederates, Dick Wheeler and Billy Baugh, were said to have ridden with the James gang until Jesse got mad ’cause they made eyes at his wife. It was a testament to their toughness that he didn’t kill them but allowed them to leave the gang.

  The remaining four men were from the Dalton gang. Having survived the shootout that broke up the gang in Coffeeville, Kansas, they’d headed north and joined up with Lazarus. They went by Jimmy, Jake, Sonny, and Clyde. He didn’t know their last names, and didn’t much care as long as they did what they were supposed to.

  At the table next to them were four Mexicans in dirty clothes. They had come from somewhere down near Del Rio. They were called Pedro Gonzalez, Jaime Sanchez, Coronado Vallentine, and Perro Gutierrez. He hadn’t asked how the man got the name Perro, which meant dog in English. They’d ridden with a local bandido on the Mexican border who’d just recently been strung up by the Texas Rangers—who they said had followed them over halfway here before heading back to Texas. The Mex’s rarely bathed, and the other men didn’t much like them in the saloon, saying the smell ruined their appetites. ‘Course, it didn’t seem to do much to lessen their thirst for whiskey. The Mexicans would be good cannon fodder if needed. He’d have them rush the ranch first to see how well defended it was.

  Behind the Mex’s were the Rebels, as they called themselves. Ex-Confederate soldiers, they still wore the tattered remains of their uniforms, as if it made any kind of difference at this late date. Bobby Barlow, Christopher Tucker, Riley Samuels, Danny Donnahue, and Willie Bodine were all from some backwoods place in Arkansas named Dogsnot, or some such hillbilly name. They weren’t very intelligent, but Lazarus didn’t plan to let them do any thinking. As long as they could ride and shoot and didn’t turn yellow on him, he figured they’d do all right.

  There were a couple of black men in the group. Ordinarily, Lazarus didn’t have much use for men of darker color, but he figured they’d be useful, especially if there was much digging to be done for the gold. Nigras were good at digging. Whether they lasted until time came to divvy up the proceeds was another matter, entirely. Bartholomew Winter and Jedediah Jones were full-on black, and they rode with a man with a heavy reputation named Cherokee Bill, a half-black and half-Indian who’d been terrorizing the ranches up near the Indian Nations for some time. They’d joined up because the U.S. Marshals had finally gotten around to trying to roust them out of their mountain hideouts up there. Cherokee Bill said they planned to stay around until the marshals went back to Oklahoma Territory. Then they’d head back to the Nations. That is, Lazarus thought, if he decided to let them live that long. At least they seemed to know their place and never tried to sit with the white folks in the saloon.

  Lazarus continued to review the men under his command in this manner for a few more minutes, then decided the time had come.

  “Men,” he called, raising his hands to stop the chatter and noise in the room so he could be heard. “There’s a good chance we’ll be ridin’ on the Jensen ranch in the next day or so. I want you to go easy on the whiskey until this is over.”

  He scowled at the loud groan that arose from the men in the room, some of whom openly laughed at his suggestion.

  He gave a cold smile. “All right, I realize temperance is something none of you are exactly used to. But know this—if any of you mess up because you’re drunk or hungover, I’ll personally put a bullet in your gut and leave you to rot to death on the trail. Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

  The noise quieted down and some of the men dropped their eyes. He knew he had their full attention now.

  “Jimmy, I want you and Jake and Sonny and Clyde to get to work puttin’ fuses in the dynamite we’ve got stacked up over at the store. I know you Dalton riders liked to use explosives in your bank jobs, so I figure you’re the ones who’d do the best at gettin’ it ready to use.”

  Jimmy nodded his head after glancing at his companions. “No problem, boss. We’ll get on it first thing in the morning.”

  Lazarus shook his head. “No, Jimmy. You’ll get on it right now, as soon as I’m through talkin’.

  “I want the rest of you to get on over to the store an’ pick up as many boxes of shells for your guns as you think you’ll need. Put ’em in your saddlebags an’ have ’em ready to travel by tomorrow. When it comes time to leave, I want everything and everybody ready to go.”

  “Why the sudden rush, Cain? We been sittin’ around here for two weeks or more, an’ now you act like there’s a fire in your britches,” said Donny Donnahue, one of the rebel riders.

  “We may have a slight problem. Joey Wells took off last night. I fear he may have gone to warn Jensen we’re comin’.”

  As they all looked around at each other, Lazarus could see the fear this caused in some of the men.

  “You mean we might not just be fightin’ Smoke Jensen, one of the toughest hombres in the area, but may also have to go up agin’ Joey Wells, the toughest hombre anywhere?” asked Three-fingers Sammy Torres.

  “That’s right, Three-fingers. You got a problem with that?” Lazarus asked.

  Torres shrugged. “Not particularly. It will no doubt mean there will be less men left to share in the loot after we kill them,” he answered with a laugh.

  Lazarus nodded. “There is that to consider. Now you men get on over to the store and pick up your bullets and dynamite, like I told you.”

  He turned to Bob Blanchard. “Bob, the bar is closed for the rest of the day.”

  Lazarus ignored the groan from the men and walked over to his table, signaling his leaders to join him.

  After the others had left, he looked around at Blackie Jackson, Tom Cartwright, Curly Joe, Pig Iron Carlton, Jeremy Britt, and King Johannson.

  “Men, we’re gonna stick together through all this. Let the other fools take the front of the charge and do the dangerous work. We’ll hang back and finish off any survivors at the ranch after the others have broken through the defenses.”

  Jeremy Britt frowned. “I say, Lazarus, that doesn’t sound very sporting.”

  Lazarus cut his eyes at Jeremy. “I don’t think you realize who we’re dealing with here, Jeremy. Wells and Jensen are two of the best men with guns we could pick to go up against. I only put our odds of beatin’ ’em, even with a ten to one advantage in numbers, at about fifty-fifty. If for some reason they turn out to be too tough for this bunch, I want us to survive to fight another day.”

  Jeremy shrugged. “You’re the boss, boss,” he said
with a smile. “But I want a piece of Joey Wells. I don’t like traitors.”

  Lazarus’s face grew cold as a gravedigger’s shovel. “For that, my friend, you’re gonna have to stand in line.”

  “Did you mean it, Lazarus, ’bout the bar bein’ closed the rest of the day?” asked Curly Joe Ventrillo.

  “Not for us, boys, only for the cannon fodder,” Lazarus answered with a grin.

  Tom “Behind the Deuces” Cartwright got to his feet and walked over to the bar.

  “Bob, gimme that bottle of Kentucky bourbon over there and some clean glasses. We got a little more drinkin’ to do ’fore the day’s over.”

  Blanchard looked over at Lazarus, saw him nod, and handed Cartwright the bottle and glasses.

  After he filled everyone’s glass, Lazarus stood up and held his glass high. “Boys, a toast. To gold, and all the things it can buy!”

  26

  After Lazarus and his men finished their drinks, he sent them after the others to make ready for the attack on Smoke Jensen’s ranch.

  He walked over to the bar and held out his glass for a refill.

  Bob Blanchard poured more whiskey into the glass, a worried look on his face.

  “What is it, Bob? You look like you got somethin’ on your mind,” Lazarus said.

  “There’s something I ought’a tell you, Mr. Cain. After all, you been awfully good to me, payin’ me for the whiskey an’ food an’ such your men are usin’.”

  “Go on, Bob, I’m listenin’.”

  “I couldn’t help but overhear you talkin’ to your men just now, ’bout goin’ on down the road an’ tryin’ somethin’ else if the attack on Smoke Jensen don’t work out.”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “How much do you really know about Smoke Jensen, Mr. Cain?”

  “Just what everybody else does, that he’s a famous shootist and ex-outlaw, and a mighty tough hombre.”

  Blanchard shook his head. “You don’t know near enough, then. See, Jensen’s an old mountain man, trained by the most famous mountain man of all, Preacher.”

  “So what? We ain’t gonna be fightin’ him up in the mountains, Bob.”