Terror of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Smoke shook his head, and held out his hand, not to take the money, but to tell the boy he didn’t want it

  “Tell your papa that he is a very good man, for only a good man would make such an offer. Tell him also, that we have no other place where we can get supplies, so I am pleased to do business with him.”

  The boy smiled broadly, then translated Smoke’s response to his father. Alvarez smiled as well, then he spoke to the boy again.

  “You are looking for Keno and his soldiers?” Pablo asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is it because you wish to join him?”

  Smoke hesitated a moment before he responded. He had read in the report given him by Goldstein, the editor of the Cosmopolitan, that many poor Mexicans regarded Keno as a heroic character. Is that how Alvarez saw him? He decided to take a chance and tell the truth.

  “No, not to join him. He crossed into America and killed many, including our friends, and the esposa of this young man.” Smoke said that Katrina was Cal’s wife, because he knew that it would have more impact with the boy and his father. And had Katrina lived, she and Cal would have been married.

  “We are looking to bring Keno and his men to justice.”

  “Justicia?” Pablo replied, saying the word in Spanish.

  Smoke looked at Sally who, though she didn’t speak Spanish, did know a few words, and was aware of the Spanish method of giving the H sound to the letter J.

  “Sí,” she said. “Justicia.”

  Pablo translated the conversation to his father, and Juan’s reaction told Smoke that he had made the right choice in telling the real reason they were looking for Keno.

  Juan looked at Cal with great sadness, then spoke to the boy.

  “Papa says that he is saddened for you. His esposa, my mama, died when I was very young, but he still misses her.”

  “Tell him I thank him for his kindness,” Cal said.

  Juan spoke again, and again Pablo translated. He pointed to the northwest. “Go five, maybe six kilometers in that direction. You will see a canyon that goes into the mountains. Papa saw some men there three days before. He thinks they are Keno’s soldiers, maybe.”

  “Thank you for that information,” Smoke said.

  Smoke gave Pablo anther fifty pesos, and Pablo said something to his father. His father shook his head, held out his hand, and responded.

  “Sí,” Pablo said, then he turned back to Smoke. “Papa says the information isn’t for sale. He says that Keno is a very evil man, and should be stopped from hurting all the people.”

  “Your father is a good man, Pablo. And you are a good man as well.”

  Pablo smiled at being called a man.

  “Would your father sell us some more eggs?” Sally asked. “We will give you fifty pesos for more eggs.”

  “Oh, señora, we do not have enough eggs for fifty pesos.”

  “Sure you do,” Sally said. “They are very good eggs, don’t you say so, gentlemen?” she asked the others.

  “Best eggs I ever seen,” Old Mo said.

  They reached the place Alvarez told them about by midafternoon. A hot dry wind was blowing through the canyon, pushing before it a billowing puff of red dust. The cloud of dust lifted high and spread out wide, making it look as if there were blood on the sun. Just as they got to the mouth of the canyon, something caught Smoke’s attention and he twisted in his saddle to look up toward the high denuded wall of the red mesa which boxed in the canyon. That was when he saw the sun’s reflection off polished metal.

  “I think I know where they are,” Smoke said, pointing.

  “Vargas, someone is coming into the canyon.”

  “Franco, Barrera, go there with Guzman,” Vargas said. “Keep an eye on our visitors.”

  Franco and Barrera joined Guzman.

  “Are we looking for only one man?” Guzman called back.

  “Sí, one man, named Smoke Jensen.”

  “Then I think maybe we have made a mistake. There are five of them. They are looking up this way. They may have seen us.”

  “Perhaps the man Jensen has gathered some to come with him,” Vargas said.

  “What shall we do?”

  “Kill them,” Vargas ordered.

  Smoke was still studying the top of the rock wall where a second earlier he had seen a flash of light. Now he saw a little puff of smoke just an instant before a bullet hit a rock nearby and whined as it ricocheted away. That was followed a second later by the low thump of gunfire. A little cloud of smoke drifted over the edge of the cliff.

  “That’s them all right! They’re shooting at us! Get over there, behind that pinnacle!” Smoke shouted, and all five of them urged their horses into a gallop, covering the fifty yards to a pinnacle that stuck out into the canyon, running parallel with it. The ironshod hooves clacked loudly on the hard rock floor of the canyon, the sound echoing back from the canyon walls.

  There were at least three more shots fired at them as they were hurrying for cover and, fortunately, all three missed.

  There was an offshoot from the canyon, going behind an upthrust slab of rock, the pinnacle providing them with cover from anyone who might be shooting at them from the opposite wall. Here, they dismounted.

  “Sally, you and Mo hold the horses,” Smoke ordered. “Pearlie, Cal, grab your Sharps, and come with me to the top of this pinnacle to see if we can get a shot at them.”

  The three men, with scoped rifles, climbed up to the top of the rock. Reaching the top, they stopped just below the crest so that they couldn’t be seen. Smoke stuck his rifle over the top and looked through the scope. On the other side of the draw, he saw five men lying on their stomachs. All five had crept up to the edge of the wall, thinking that because they were prone, they were out of danger.

  They were mistaken.

  “Do you see them?” Smoke asked.

  “Yeah, I do,” Cal said.

  “Me too,” Pearlie added.

  “Cal, you take the one in the middle. Pearlie, you’ve got the one on the extreme left, I’ll take the one on the extreme right. The two men that will remain will have had a man hit on each side of them. I expect that will shake them up a bit.”

  “We need to all three pull the trigger at the same time,” Pearlie said.

  “Yes. We’ll shoot on three.”

  Smoke counted, and as he said the word “three,” all three rifles boomed, the concentrated sound very loud and echoing back and forth from wall to wall across the canyon floor.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Santos was lying on the rim of the wall between Pacheco and Cabara, when all of a sudden he saw blood and brain detritus literally explode from the back of their heads. Some of it got on him.

  “Ayiee!” he shouted in shock and fear. He got up and ran back from the rim.

  Garza was lying between Pacheco and Nunez, and he too got up to run away from the rim.

  The others shouted in alarm as well.

  “They are devils, those men,” Santos said. “No one can shoot that well.”

  “You’re our leader, Vargas. What do we do now?” Montoya asked.

  “Take a look. See if you can see what they’re doing.”

  “I’m not going to stick my head over the edge. Their bullets are coming too close.”

  “Take a look,” Vargas ordered. “Unless you are a woman, and too frightened to do it.”

  Montoya glared at him, then, staying on his stomach, scooted out to the edge of the mesa. He raised his head up just enough to look over to the other side.

  “See anything?” Vargas asked.

  “No,” Montoya replied. He inched a little farther forward on his stomach, then he saw a flash from the top of the rock on the other side of the draw. In almost the same instant he heard a loud pop, and felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his right ear.

  “Ow!” he called out in pain and, putting his hand on his ear, he backed cautiously away from the edge of the mesa. When he pulled his hand away, a little piece of the flesh
of his ear came with it.

  “My ear! My ear has been shot off!” he said, his voice strained with pain.

  “Quit crying like a niño. You still have your ear,” Vargas said. “The bullet hit only a piece of your earlobe.”

  “What are we going to do now?” Santos asked. “Our horses are down there, we can’t get to them without being shot.”

  “We will go down on the other side of the mountain to return to our camp,” Vargas said.

  “Do you intend to leave our horses behind?” Santos asked.

  Vargas laughed. “Santos, we have two hundred horses.”

  Smoke kept someone on top of the pinnacle for the rest of the day, keeping watch. He knew there was no way he could get to the men on the other side of the canyon, but there was no way they could get to him either.

  As darkness fell, Smoke called up to Old Mo. “Mo, come on down. Even if they started across now, you wouldn’t be able to see them in the dark from up there.”

  Old Mo came down, and saw that Pearlie and Cal were laying a fire. “You’re buildin’ a fire?”

  “You want to eat your bacon raw?”

  “No. I was just wonderin’ about buildin’ a fire. Seems like it might draw ’em to us.”

  “Yeah, doesn’t it?” Smoke said.

  Old Mo chuckled. “I shoulda knowed that’s what you had in mind.”

  After they cooked their bacon and beans, they threw enough wood onto the fire to keep it going, then laid out their bedrolls around the fire. They didn’t bed down by the fire though. Instead they pulled away then, back into the darkness, hoping by that ruse to draw Keno’s men in, if they decided to try it again.

  Keno’s cabin

  So far Rosita had not been harmed, but she didn’t know how long it would be before Keno, or one of the other men, did something to her. She had never been with a man, or a boy for that matter, but she did know what men and women did with each other. There had even been times when she thought of it, and wondered what it would be like when she was married, and with her husband.

  But the thought of Keno, or any of his men, coming to her now, filled her with revulsion and fear. And though nobody had done anything to her, she was sure that it would only be a matter of time until someone did. After all, Keno had said that he would “make a woman of her,” and she was pretty sure she knew what that meant. She knew, also, that if anyone did decide to force themselves on her, there would be nothing she could do to prevent it.

  It was those thoughts, and that fear, that caused her to sleep fitfully, when she was able to sleep at all.

  As she lay on the floor in the corner, thinking about this, she heard several loud voices coming from just outside and she stayed very quiet, there in the darkness of the cabin, listening to the spirited conversation.

  At first she feared it might have something to do with her, but she learned quickly that it was about something altogether different. They were talking about the man called Smoke Jensen, the knight in shining armor that Rosita was certain was coming to rescue her.

  “He isn’t alone,” one of the men was saying, clearly agitated. “You said we would be an army against Jensen, but he isn’t alone, he has people with him.”

  By now Rosita had heard enough of the men speak that she could recognize some of them by their voice alone. Vargas was one that she could recognize, and he was the one who was speaking now.

  “How many are there?” Keno asked.

  “There’s five of them,” Vargas said.

  “Five? And you ran from five men? You have ten men with you.”

  “I had ten,” Vargas said. “Now I have only seven. They killed Pacheco, Nunez, and Cabara.”

  “And how many of them did you kill?”

  “None, Coronel.”

  “You were in a gun battle, ten of you to five gringos, and in this gun battle you had three men killed, but killed none of them?”

  “It was not a gun battle, Coronel.”

  “If it was not a gun battle, what was it?”

  “It was a killing, Coronel, as if hunting and killing an animal. Pacheco, Nunez, and Cabara were all shot at the same time. Smoke Jensen and the gringos with him, have rifles that can shoot from very far off. They can shoot us, but we can’t shoot back because our bullets cannot reach them. They are devils, these men are, with the skill to use such a rifle.”

  “Where are Pacheco, Nunez, and Cabara now?”

  “We had to leave them, and our horses.”

  “So, like a coward, you ran from the gringos, left your amigos and your horses behind.”

  “If we had gone to recover the horses, we would have all been killed. It was not cowardice, Coronel. It was good sense.”

  “What kind of man is this Smoke Jensen?” Keno asked, though he had no expectation of the question being answered.

  As Rosita lay in the dark, listening to the fear in their voices, she smiled. It was her first smile since being captured.

  Smoke and the others spent the entire night away from the fire, which hadn’t been needed for warmth, and had been built only for a ruse. Apparently, Keno’s men had had enough because no one showed up. By the next morning, Smoke was convinced that the men they had exchanged fire with the previous day were gone.

  “I’ll find out,” Cal said.

  “Cal, no, it’s too dangerous,” Sally said.

  Cal chuckled. “Would you rather your own husband take the risk?”

  “Well, no, not that. It’s just that . . .”

  “Cal is right, Sally,” Smoke said. “We need to find out if anyone is there, and Cal is the best choice. He is the youngest, and the most agile. If he goes by himself, I think he will have the best chance of getting over there without being discovered.”

  “If I see that anyone is still there, I’ll flash you a signal,” Cal said. “What shall the signal be?”

  “Just flash your mirror until you get a response from us,” Smoke said. “Once you get a response, and we are in communication, don’t try to use a code. Two flashes will mean they are still there. Three will mean they have gone.”

  “Cal,” Sally said. She put her arms around him and hugged him. “Please be very careful.”

  “Miz Sally, you ain’t never saw no one who is goin’ to be as careful as me.”

  Sally shuddered at the grammar. “I’m not even going to correct you,” she said with a smile.

  Cal returned the smile. “I was just funnin’ you. What I meant to say was, you’ve never seen anyone who is going to be as careful as I will be.”

  “Very good,” Sally said.

  “Smoke, I’m not takin’ a gun with me. It’ll just get in the way of my climbin’, and if they’re still there, and they see me, one gun isn’t going to do me much good anyway.”

  “I think you might be right,” Smoke said.

  “Good luck, and be careful,” Pearlie said. Old Mo just nodded toward him, and Cal started out on his mission.

  At first the route Cal selected had looked passable from the ground, but once he started climbing it proved to be much more difficult than he had thought. After more than half an hour of climbing he wasn’t sure that he had gained so much as an inch. But when he looked back toward the ground, he could see that he was making progress, for by now he was dangerously high.

  Cal clung to the side of the mountain and moved only when he had a secure handhold or foothold . . . tiny though they might be. Sweat poured into his eyes and he grew thirsty with his effort, but still he climbed.

  He found an indentation in the side of the cliff, almost like a chimney, and climbing into it he realized that it was providing him not only with cover, but concealment. At about the same time it became easier to climb, and easier still, until he reached an incline that was no steeper than about sixty degrees. This allowed him to crawl up, rather than climb, and as he got even closer to the top, it eased down to between thirty and forty-five degrees, so that he was able to walk up.

  Then, just before he reached the top, he got
down onto his stomach and slithered up to where he could see over the edge. He saw three men lying there and as he studied them more closely, he realized that they were dead. He was certain that these were the men they had killed yesterday afternoon. There were also a few burned-out campfires, but there was no sign of anyone else there.

  Cal made a careful, but very thorough examination of the rest of the area, and he saw footprints leading south, along the top of the ridge. He was certain, then, that everyone had left.

  Cal walked over to the edge of the mesa where, standing up in plain sight, he began to flash his mirror. When he got a return flash, telling him that he had established contact, he sent the signal that everyone was gone. Three flashes.

  The return signal was one they had worked on before leaving The Wide Loop. It was dot dash dash, a pause, then dash. WT, which meant for him to wait right where he was.

  Cal flashed back UD, which meant that he had received and understood the message Then he sat down on the edge of the rim, with his legs dangling over the edge and watched as Smoke and the others reappeared from behind the pinnacle where they had taken cover the day before. When they reached the canyon floor, Smoke called up to him.

  “What did you find?” The last word came echoing back, “find, find, find?”

  Cal cupped his hands around his mouth. “There is nothing up here but three dead bodies!” he shouted.

  “Send them down!”

  “What? How ’m I going to do that?”

  “Easy. Just push them over the edge and let ’em fall!” Smoke called back.

  Cal wondered why Smoke would make such a strange request, but he had learned long ago not to question him. He didn’t like the idea of pushing someone off a high cliff, but in this case, what did it matter? They were dead, so the fall sure wasn’t going to hurt them.

  He pulled them to the edge, one at a time, until all three were there. Then he pushed them over, and started back down.