Scarlet changed to dazzling white, and then blackness. Shot through the head, Victor Spectre died without ever recognizing the error of his ways.
Not satisfied with the death of his enemy, Smoke Jensen continued to search the upper floor. Alarmed voices called to him from below. He recognized one as that of Monte Carson. Over his shoulder he called to his friend.
“Come on up, Monte. I just killed Victor Spectre. We have to find what else is up here.”
Footsteps pounded on the stairs as Smoke went to the next room. Monte joined him after he had checked it. They headed to the last room at the head of the hall. Smoke stood to one side of the door, .45 at the ready. Monte turned the knob and flung the panel inward. Smoke spun around the jamb and into the room. There, a feeble Olin Buckner tried to raise a Winchester and fire at Smoke Jensen. A Shoshoni arrow protruded from his left shoulder and hampered his effort. Smoke crossed the room to the bed and yanked the rifle out of Buckner’s weak grasp.
“I haven’t seen you for a while, Buckner,” Smoke gibed at the wounded man. “Can’t say you’re looking better than ever.”
“You bastard,” Buckner panted breathily.
Smoke examined the man. The local doctor had done a good job. Outside of the arrow, it appeared that the bullet wound Smoke had given him was healing well. It showed not a sign of angry red swelling that would indicate infection. That pleased Smoke Jensen mightily. He told Olin Buckner why.
“It looks like you will most likely live to meet the hangman, Buckner. If it’s any consolation, I won’t enjoy watching that. Public executions have never been my idea of having fun.”
“A lot of good that does me,” Buckner grumbled.
“I’m sure it doesn’t overjoy you. Now, where’s the loot your gang accumulated?”
“To hell with you. If that damned Indian had not shot me, I would have killed you the moment you came through the door.”
Smoke’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not good enough. Never mind, we’ll find it, and we’ll do it before bringing the doctor to deal with that arrow.”
Buckner paled. “You can’t do that! I’m your prisoner,” he squealed like a pinched pig. One look at the stern, unrelenting expression of Smoke Jensen, and his appeal died. “There’s a door on the—on the balcony. It’s locked. We put everything in there.”
“Whoo-eee! Lookie there,” Zeke Duncan howled gleefully when the door had been forced on the improvised strong room. “Must be a fortune here. Naw, three fortunes.”
A shaft of light through the doorway gave a soft glow to stacks of gold and silver ingots. Bags of coin, and neat rows of paper currency, filled tables jammed tightly together. Enough money to boggle the minds of nearly anyone.
Nursing his wounded shoulder, Ezra peered over the shoulder of his partner. “Ya ask me, I allow as how it’s all Smoke’s now.”
Smoke Jensen surprised and disappointed a number of people with his response. “No. It has to go back to the places they undoubtedly robbed on the way here. The banks, and stores, and stage lines can be identified and what remains divided among them. Which reminds me. Whatever money we find on these trash has to be the wages Spectre was paying them, so we can round that up and add it to this.”
Zeke looked genuinely pained. “Sure is a shame to get hands on so much gold and have to give it back,” he mourned.
At that moment, Sally joined the cluster on the balcony, accompanied by her bodyguard of Shoshoni warriors and ranch hands. She extended her hands to take one of each aged mountain man. “At least you got to rescue a lady in distress.” Then she impulsively came forward and kissed each of them on the forehead.
Crimson rose from the collarless necks of their shirts to the roots of their thinning gray hair. Zeke began to shuffle his moccasins, while beside him Ezra dragged out a huge, paisley kerchief and mopped at his face to hide his blush and rubbed the toe of one boot with the other.
“Awh, gosh, ma’am, we was only doin’ what’s right,” Zeke muttered softly.
Ezra shifted his cud of tobacco. “That’s right, ma’am. We was only helpin’ a friend. ’Twern’t anything special.”
“Well, I love you both for it,” Sally declared with a sunny smile.
Tension eased and Smoke Jensen took the opportunity to make an announcement. “We’ll rest up here a few days, then make ready to return to the Sugarloaf.”
“So soon?” Banker Spaun objected. “You’ve hardly gotten here. We have to celebrate this great victory.”
Smoke sighed, indicating his regret. “Sorry, but there’s the spring branding to tend to and the herd needs culling for sale. Horses don’t wait for people.”
Spaun looked hurt, then brightened. Nodding toward the heavily blood-stained clothing of Smoke Jensen, he spoke with renewed encouragement. “Shot up the way you are, you won’t be going anywhere for a while. We’ll still have a few days to whoop it up.”
Smoke Jensen cut his eyes to those of his wife. He saw the anticipatory gleam there and read it correctly. “Yes, I’m sure we will.”
ORDEAL OF THE MOUNTAIN MAN
1
Dust rose like a brown shroud around the rumps of a long string of shiny coated horses as they trotted, tails high, away from the lush pastures of Sugarloaf, Smoke Jensen’s ranch. Smoke and a dozen hands, including Utah Jack Grubbs, Jerry Harkness and Luke Britton, had set out to drive a herd of two hundred remounts north to Fort Custer on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. It would turn out to be a much longer and harder journey than Smoke would have believed, becoming a grueling ordeal for Jensen and every man with him.
At the lower pasture fence, Sally and young Bobby Jensen sat their mounts and waved at the departing backs. Sally thought uneasily of the many times Smoke had ridden away on far more dangerous missions. Over the nearly ten years they had been married, after Smoke’s first wife and son were brutally murdered, Smoke had strapped on six-guns, and frequently a badge, and had gone off to right the wrongs done to himself, or more often to others, even strangers. Smoke didn’t see himself as any sort of Robin Hood, though he had read the legends as a youth, learning from the old mountain man, Preacher, what he had abandoned when he strayed from his parents’ wagon as a half-grown child. The family had been bound for the Northwest Territory when he got lost in the wilderness.
Sally had first seen Smoke Jensen as a ruffian, a barbarian a gunfighter. She was teaching school at the time. Smoke came to town and cleaned out a gang of gun trash and saddle tramps, leaving a wide wake of bodies along the way. At first, his blood-thirsty conduct disgusted and frightened her. She had soon learned better, when he rescued her from the clutches of the gang boss. After that, she knew him as a tall, handsome man with longish, reddish brown hair and a ready smile. Now, she brushed aside such reflections and thought about the three hands who rode with him.
Jerry Harkness had been with Smoke, ever since he changed from cattle ranching to raising blooded horses. Jerry knew more about horses and their ailments than most veterinarians. He had grown up on a Thoroughbred farm in Kentucky. Lean and tall, Jerry was in his mid-twenties, with the bowed legs of a jockey, his muscles bunched and corded. He was, as their cook, Zeke Thackery, put it, smack-bang loyal. Jerry rode for the brand and would die for it if need be.
Another cut from the same mold was Luke Britton. A year or two younger than Jerry, he was an easy-going, even-tempered young man with a high school education, which was an exception for the times. Barrel-chested and broad-shouldered, he was frequently mistaken for a bare-knuckle boxer. Which he wasn’t, but he could hold his own, much to the regret of many a proddy drifter who challenged him. Luke was a man to ride the river with.
Jack Grubbs was a short, bow-legged, salty horse expert with a checkered past. When the Sugarloaf foreman had interviewed him only three months earlier, he had been troubled enough by what he learned to turn Jack over to Smoke to question. Later, after he had hired Grubbs, Smoke told Sally that Jack had been in prison. A streak of wildness in his youth, Utah
Jack had explained, which he had outgrown. Recalling his own past, Smoke had said that all Jack needed was a chance to redeem himself. For some reason, that now came back to give her a cold shiver along her spine. She shook it off and turned to their adopted son.
“Come on, Bobby. We might as well ride back to the house. We won’t see them for two months,” she added with a sigh. How she would miss her beloved Smoke, she thought as she brushed a lock of black hair back behind an ear.
Bobby wrinkled his freckled, pug nose and put words to her thoughts. “I’m gonna miss Smoke awfully.” His fourteen-year-old’s voice croaked with the awkwardness of change. “I hope nothing happens to them.”
With Luke and Utah Jack on swing, Pop Walker on drag, Smoke Jensen rode at the front of the trail herd with Jerry Harkness. They headed for Wyoming in a lighthearted mood. Jerry cracked a constant string of Indian-and-Politician jokes.
“D’you hear the one about the politician who went out to explain to the Sioux chiefs about the new treaty? He got out here with an interpreter who translated his words. After each sentence had been put in Lakota, the chiefs would grunt and say, ‘Unkce!’ He told them how they would be restricted to reservations from now on, and again they said, ‘Unkce!’” Smoke was surprised that Jerry pronounced the word correctly: Oon-K’CHAY. “So this goes on until the end, when the chiefs all tapped their open palms with their eagle wing fans and shouted it three times.
“Then one chief got up and made a short speech. The interpreter told the politician that the chiefs thanked him for his good words and wanted to know if he wished to see some of Sioux life. The politician said that yes, he did. He had always wanted to see a buffalo hunt. It was arranged, and hunters rode out to find the bison while the chiefs and the politician started walking out on the prairie where the buffalo roamed. All of a sudden, the interpreter reached out and grabbed the politician’s arm and stopped him from stepping in a big pile of buffalo bull plop, and said, ‘Be careful not to step in the unkce.’”
Smoke groaned and held his side; he had heard it before. “Jerry, don’t you have anything better to amuse yourself?”
“Oh, sure. Did you hear about the Indian, the settler, and the politician who all died and wound up outside the Pearly Gates?”
“Spare me!” Smoke wailed in mock agony.
Four days later, six pair of eyes watched while the herd crossed the border from Colorado into the Wyoming Territory. One of the men in the small party, Yancy Osburn, turned to the others.
“That’s them, all right. Burk, you ride north and let Hub Volker know they’re on the way.”
Ainsley Burk nodded, then asked, “What are the rest of you gonna do?”
Osburn pointed to the sleek remounts. “We’ll follow along, send back reports on their movement.”
“Good enough. I’ll tell Mr. Volker that.” Burk walked his horse away from his companions in order not to draw the attention of the drovers.
Once out of ear-shot, Yancy turned to the others with a nasty grin. “Well, boys, now that we’ve got Mr. Rule Book out of our hair, I’ve got me an idea how to pass our time while those nags move north.”
“What’s that?” two chorused.
Yancy gave them a wide wink. “I know of a nice little stagecoach we can rob.”
Fifty miles northwest, Owen Curtis sat in his saddle, his left leg cocked up around the pommel, eyes fixed on the brown humps of his prize Herefords. He had paid a pretty penny for the first bull and three cows that formed the base of his herd. Over the years, he had added new blood, and his stock increased by nature’s decree. Although the bevy was still small, Owen modestly counted himself as a rich man.
By the lights of many who struggled against the hostilities of Wyoming Territory, the severe winter weather, summer drought, and of course always the Indians, Curtis was indeed a wealthy, successful man. The rumble of distant hooves drew his attention to the head of the grazing beefs. Three of his hands kept them in a loose gather, allowing them to move slowly through the grassy meadow, eating their fill, while subtly leading them toward water. Seven riders appeared abruptly over the ridge of the basin, riding hard toward the cattle.
Owen Curtis looked on helplessly, stunned by the sight, as puffs of white smoke blossomed from the muzzles of the rifles the intruders held to their shoulders. Two of his men went down as Owen swung his leg into the stirrup and slid his Winchester from its scabbard. More gunshots crackled through the basin, and the cattle bolted and began to run wildly across the meadow. A half dozen more rustlers jolted down the side slopes of the bowllike pasture and began to turn the cattle back on their frightened fellows.
Curtis took aim and knocked one outlaw from his saddle with a bullet through the chest. He worked the lever action of the Model ’73 and sought another target. The only problem was that he had attracted the attention of the thieves. Three cut their horses in his direction and bore down on the rancher. One of them raised a rifle and fired.
A bright, hot pain erupted in Owen Curtis’ chest. Debilitating numbness swiftly followed. Owen groaned and tried to line up his sights on the man who had shot him. The other two fired then, and he dimly heard a bullet crack past his head. Sheer whiteness washed through his skull an instant later, and he sagged in the saddle, lost his grip with his knees, and slid to the ground.
Immediately, Hubble Volker snapped an order. “Get these snuffies under control and take ’em out of here.”
“Where to, Mr. Volker?”
“Take ’em up to Bent Rock Canyon, Garth. There’s plenty pines up there to build a holding corral.”
Garth Evans reacted, predictably, at once. “You mean work? Get blisters on our hands?”
Hubble Volker laughed. “Ain’t what you had in mind when you joined the Reno Jim gang, is it? Well, when you’re countin’ your share of the take, you’ll forget the broke blisters an’ sore muscles.” He turned and shouted across the rumble of hooves to the others. “Get ’em under control. Head ’em up and slow ’em down.”
With an anticipatory twinkle in his eye, Yancy Osburn watched the steady approach of the stage to Laramie. The heads of the six-up team bobbed rhythmically, and their powerful shoulders churned to draw the heavily laden vehicle forward. It had taken Osburn and his cohorts a day’s ride to get in position. Yancy figured the herd of remounts would stay to the main trail, there being plenty of Indians roaming out there if they did not. Now they were about to relieve the Wells Fargo company of a good deal of loot. Osburn made curt gestures, directing his men to position.
He and Smiling Dave Winters remained in the center of the road, a fleshy barricade. The coach disappeared into a dip, and each of the outlaws raised a bandanna to cover his face. Weapons at the ready, they waited for the stage to reappear a scant thirty yards from them.
Pounding hooves, a jingle of harness and the creak of leather springs announced the arrival of the Laramie stage. The heads of the lead pair surged above the draw and gained the level. Quickly the rest appeared, and Yancy made out the driver and shotgun guard. He raised his Winchester and killed the guard before the driver could react to their presence in the road.
With only his six-gun for defense, the grizzled teamster hauled on the reins and applied the brake. The coach swayed to a dusty stop. Immediately the masked outlaws moved in.
Ansel Wharton had driven stages for Wells Fargo for nine years. In that time he had been robbed eleven times. He knew exactly what to do when he saw the masked bandits strung out along the road and blocking it ahead. Especially when the shotgun guard jolted backward and toppled over the side of the driver’s seat. Meekly, all the while fuming inside, he hauled on the reins and brought the coach to a stop. The masked ones, like these, rarely killed everyone, he consoled himself.
“Afternoon,” called the big one in the middle of the road. And Ansel could tell the sneer that had to be under the bandanna by the tone of voice. “We’ll relieve you of the strongbox, if you please.”
“What if I told you we don’
t have one?” He had to do that, company orders.
The bullet-headed outlaw in charge shook his head. “Then your wife would be a widow.”
“Ain’t got a wife. She died of the cholera back a ways. Now, let me see, was it in sixty-an’-four, or seventy-two?”
Anger rang in the snarled response. “Quit stallin’ and hand it over.”
Facing defeat and knowing it, Ansel shrugged. “I’d be obliged if you let me step down an’ you had a couple of your friends remove it. It’s a heavy sucker this trip.”
Instantly the outlaw’s mood changed. He laughed delightedly. “Mighty nice to hear. Good enough, old man, climb on down. Mind, keep yer hand clear of that hogleg yer packin’.”
“Oh, I been robbed before. An’ I know what to do, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
“There’s some of you do learn, I do declare.”
The Jovial Bandit, Ansel named him mentally. He’d remember the voice. The size, too. This one was a brute, a huge bruiser with broad shoulders, a hefty girth, thick arms and wrists. Looked like he could take on three men at once and not raise a sweat. He worked his way down the small, round, cast-iron mounting steps and walked to the headstall of the lead horse.
“Keep him from spookin’, don’t ya see?” he explained to the highwaymen.
Yancy Osburn raised a ham hand to the brim of his hat and pushed it back. “Now there’s a smart man. Good idee. Keep ’em calm while we relieve you of everything else and ask the passengers for a contribution.”
Spirit Of The Mountain Man/ordeal Of The Mountain Man (Pinnacle Westerns) Page 27
