Pursuit Of The Mountain Man

by Johnstone, William W.

  Maria and Marlene rode on. Andrea dismounted. The last thing she would remember for about an hour was something crashing into her jaw and the ground coming up to meet her.

  “What the hell do you mean, she’s gone?” von Hausen roared.

  “I mean she’s vanished,” Marlene screamed at him. “One minute she was there, the next minute she was gone. The tracks lead straight north.”

  “Break camp,” von Hausen ordered. “Jensen’s got her.”

  The men had found most of their horses and repaired the cinch straps. They quickly saddled up and broke camp. Dick Dorman could sit a saddle. But he had to have help dismounting. He gritted his teeth against the pain and rode. Joe Elliot’s left arm was in a sling, and he was hurting something awful, but he followed along, riding Frank’s horse. Searchers had found Terry’s horse and brought it to him.

  Henry Barton was riding a pack horse that had the worst gait of any animal he had ever tried to ride. Sandy Beecher rode a mule that tried to bite him every time he mounted and tried to kick him every time he dismounted.

  “You are the most despicable man I have ever met in all my life,” Andrea told Smoke. “This is outrageous. I have never been treated like this in my life. This is kidnapping. I will have you arrested.”

  “Shut up,” Smoke told her.

  He had tied her hands to the saddlehorn and was seriously considering wrapping a sack around her mouth.

  “I suppose you intend to violate me,” Andrea said.

  Smoke looked back at her. “You have to be kidding! I’d sooner bed down with a skunk.”

  She spat at him. She wasn’t a very good spitter. With spit on her chin, she said, “You are certainly no gentleman. You are a brute and a boorish oaf.”

  “Lady, shut up.”

  She screamed so loud it hurt Smoke’s ears.

  “Go right ahead and squall, lady. No one’s going to hear you. In case you’re interested in geography, that’s Roughlock Hill right over there.”

  “I hate you, I despise you, I loathe you!”

  “This is really going to be a fun trip. I can sense that right off.”

  “Where are you taking me, you pig?”

  “To the mountains, lady. I’m glad you had sense enough to bring a coat with you. You’re going to need it.”

  “Why did you kidnap me?”

  “So the others will follow.”

  “I shall have you whipped to death, you barbarian.”

  “Right, lady.”

  “If you attempt to violate me I shall give you no satisfaction.”

  “You’re as safe with me as you would be in a nunnery.”

  “Don’t you find me beautiful?”

  “In the same way a rattlesnake is pretty.”

  “These bonds are too tight. My hands hurt.”

  “My ears hurt.”

  She cussed him.

  “You have a very dirty mouth, lady.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “We’ll eat this evening.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Later.”

  She cussed him.

  “I’m not so sure this was such a good idea,” Smoke muttered.

  On the third night out, Andrea finally got it through her head that Smoke was not going to violate her precious wonderful flawless perfect body. And that made her madder than the kidnapping.

  The man was infuriating. He seemed to sleep with one eye open. She could not escape because Smoke tied a rope around her waist and the other end to his arm before they went to bed. Three times she’d tried to slip away. Three times Smoke had jerked her back to the ground so hard her eyes crossed, her teeth rattled, and her butt hurt from the impact.

  While the fire burned down to coals, Andrea asked, “Why don’t you sleep with me tonight?”

  “I’m married, lady.”

  “She isn’t here.”

  “Yes, she is. In my mind.”

  “Is she beautiful?”

  “Yes.”

  “She probably weighs three hundred pounds and has a head like a hog.”

  Smoke laughed at her.

  “You find me amusing?” she flared at him.

  “I find you dangerous, Andrea. Vicious and unfeeling and very dangerous.”

  “It was only a game, Mister Jensen,” she said softly.

  “Lady, you people were going to kill me.”

  “When this started, we thought of it as the ultimate hunt. You are depicted as a notorious gunfighter. A killer. We assumed there would be arrest warrants on you. That no one would care if you got killed. We ...”

  “Stop it, Andrea. You’re lying. Stop lying. You found out about me before the hunt started. You could have stopped it before you left Dodge. And you killed that Army patrol. A cold-blooded ambush. So stop lying and making excuses for yourself and your lousy damn friends. And Andrea, I buried your husband. We talked at length before he died. You shot him with that little hide-out gun I took from you. And he didn’t die easy.”

  She refused to meet his eyes. “If you turn me over to the police, I won’t be prosecuted.”

  “I know that. I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. But believe this, Andrea, if you believe nothing else: if you try to kill me, I’ll hurt you.”

  “Big brave man, aren’t you?” she sneered the words at him.

  “No. Just a man who is trying to survive. Now shut your mouth and go to sleep.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “I’ll stuff a gag in your big mouth.”

  She lay down and closed her eyes.

  “He’s leadin’ us back into the mountains,” Roy Drum said. “Just as sure as hell that’s what he’s doin’.”

  “And then? ...” Gunter asked wearily.

  “He’ll start killin’ us,” John T. said, his voice flat. “That’s why he grabbed Andrea. So’s we’d follow him.”

  “Heading back to the mountains,” von Hausen said, scratching his unshaven chin. “And he’ll make his final stand there, won’t he?”

  “You better believe it,” Utah said. “Howlin’ and snarlin’ and spittin’ and scratchin’ and shootin’.” He looked back at the group. “If any of you boys feel you’re comin’ down with a case of the yeller belly, git gone now. ’Cause once we git up in the high lonesome, there ain’t gonna be no runnin’.”

  No one left. They sat their saddles and stared at the man, defiance in their eyes.

  “Don’t say you wasn’t warned,” John T. told them. “Let’s ride.”

  Smoke rode through Powder River Pass and took a deep breath of the cool clear air. He smiled, smelling the fragrance of the high country; he was home. Halfway between there and Cloud Peak, he set up his first ambush point, after securing Andrea’s mouth so she could not scream and warn her blood-thirsty friends.

  She tried to bite him and kick him, but he was expecting that and got her secured with only a small bruise on his shin.

  “Now you be a sweet girl now,” he told her, after stepping out of kicking range.

  She bugged her eyes and fought her bonds and tried to kick him again.

  “Relax, Andrea. You’re making your bonds tighter.”

  She soon realized he was right and ceased her frantic struggling. She fell back on the ground and glared hate at him.

  “Hans was probably glad to die after being married to you,” Smoke muttered. He picked up his rifle and moved to a spot several miles away.

  Smoke watched the long, single-file column come up the old trail, Roy Drum watching the ground, tracking Smoke like the expert he was. Roy passed within ten feet of Smoke.

  Ed Clay was the last man in the column. When the rider in front of him had rounded the sharp bend in the trail—a place Smoke had deliberately chosen—Smoke leaped from the ledge and knocked Ed out of the saddle, clubbing him with a big fist on the way to the ground. He threw Ed across his shoulder, grabbed his rope from his saddlehorn, and slapped the horse on the rump, sending it back down the trail. Smoke slipped
into the brush and climbed back up to the ledge.

  There, he hog-tied Ed and gagged him with the hired gun’s own filthy bandana and picked up his rifle, slipping back into the brush, paralleling the trail.

  “I sure will be glad to get shut of this damn mule, Ed,” Sandy said. “You wouldn’t like to trade off for a spell, would you?”

  He got no reply as they rode further into the dimness of thick timber and brush.

  “Did you hear me, Ed?” Sandy asked, twisting in the saddle.

  Ed wasn’t there.

  “We got trouble!” Sandy called. He looked up in time to see a stick of dynamite come sputtering out of the ridge above him. “Oh, hell!” he yelled.

  The charge blew, the mule walled its eyes and bowed up, and Sandy’s butt left the saddle and he went flying through the air. He landed on the west side of the trail and went rolling down the slope, hollering and cussing all the way down. He landed in a creek and banged his head on a rock, knocking him silly.

  Marlene’s horse reared up at the huge explosion and threw her off. She landed hard and immediately started bellering.

  One Eye’s horse fell against the slope and Smoke took aim and conked One Eye on the noggin with a fist-sized rock. One Eye slid off the saddle, out cold.

  Smoke added more confusion to the riders on the narrow trail by jerking out his left-hand six gun and emptying it in the air. Then he threw back his head and howled like a wolf and screamed like a panther. The horses went crazy.

  Smoke found some good-sized throwing rocks and started pelting those below him. One cracked von Hausen’s pith helmet and knocked the Baron slap out of the saddle. He landed belly-down on the edge of the trail and about fifteen seconds later, he joined Sandy in the creek, sitting in the cold water, addled goofy by the blow to his head.

  Smoke had had his fun, but he wasn’t going to play games with skilled gunhandlers like John T. and those of the original bunch. He pulled his rifle to his shoulder and blew Tom Ritter out of the saddle. The outlaw was cooling meat when he hit the ground and went slowly tumbling down the slope to the creek.

  “Damn you, Jensen!” John Flagg screamed, struggled to get his horse under control and finally managing to jerk his .45 out of leather.

  Smoke shot him between the eyes.

  John Flagg’s horse bolted and ran right over Maria, knocking the woman over the side of the slope. She rolled and tumbled down the bank and hit the creek just as von Hausen was getting to his feet. She hit him squarely across the knees and both of them went under, flailing and waving their arms and slipping and sliding on the slick rocks in the creek.

  Smoke lit another stick of dynamite and dropped it to the trail below him. Then he cut out at a fast run through the timber.

  The charge blew and knocked Utah Red off his horse. The hired gun went rolling down the slope and slammed into von Hausen and Maria just as they were crawling out of the creek. They returned to the creek.

  Slick Finger Bob was tossed out of the saddle and landed on his belly on the trail. He had just enough wind left in him to roll frantically off the trail to avoid having his head smashed by the hooves of the panicked horses. He felt himself going over the edge and grabbed at an ankle. Marlene’s ankle. The two of them went over the side of the steep embankment and began the fast tumble down.

  Von Hausen had just enough wind left him to crawl up the bank of the creek. He almost made it. Slick Finger Bob and Marlene banged into him and knocked him clear to the other side of the fast-rushing mountain stream. Von Hausen’s head hit a rock and he was out.

  The mountain trail grew quiet. John T. peeped around a tree trunk and took in the sight before him. Two men were down and dead as a hammer. Tom Ritter lay on his belly and John Flagg was on his back, a hole right between his eyes. One Eye looked dead; then John T. saw his fingers began to twitch. A whole bunch of people appeared to be in the crick below, squallin’ and bellerin’ and cussin’ and hollerin’ for help. John T. couldn’t see Ed Clay nowheres. Dick Dorman had been tossed from his horse and landed on his bad ankle. He had passed out from the pain.

  John T. motioned toward Cat Brown to take the south end of the trail while he climbed the bank on the north end. It only took a couple of minutes for them to see that Jensen was gone.

  Marlene was crawled up the slope, her eyes wild with hate and fury, her mouth working overtime, spewing out every cuss word she knew in several languages. She was mud from head to boots.

  John T. looked around and finally found his horse and tied a rope to the saddlehorn, dangling the other end down to the creek. “Tie it around his majesty’s shoulders,” John T. called. “We’ll pull him up.”

  “What about me!” Maria shrieked.

  “Drag your own ass up here,” John T. muttered, “We’ll git to you,” he hollered. “Just take it easy.”

  Von Hausen was hauled up the slope. He lost his boots and his pants during the salvage effort.

  Slick Finger Bob was crawling up the slope, pushing Maria ahead of him.

  “Get your hands off my backside!” she screamed at him.

  “Well, goddamnit, lady, what else am I gonna push against?”

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “All right,” Slick Finger said, and removed his hands and got out of the way.

  Maria hollered all the way back down.

  26

  Smoke put the muzzle of a .44 against Ed Clay’s head. “I’ll give you a choice, partner,” Smoke told him. “Leave or die. What’s it going to be?”

  “You give me a chance, Mister Jensen, and I’m gone. I won’t join up with the others. You don’t have to give me a horse, a gun, or nothin’. Just let me leave and you’ll never see me again.”

  “Head straight east,” Smoke told him. “There’s a settlement on the Clear. If I see you in these mountains, I’ll kill you.”

  “The only people that’s gonna see me from now on is my momma and daddy, back in Nebraska.”

  “Get gone.”

  Ed Clay got gone. Smoke doubted he’d return to Nebraska, but he also felt he’d never see the man again.

  Smoke tossed Andrea into the saddle, tied her hands, and swung aboard his Appaloosa. He headed north, deeper into the Bighorns.

  “Found Ed’s horse,” Henry Barton said. “But there ain’t a sign of Ed.”

  The camp looked like a field hospital. Dick Dorman and von Hausen were stretched out side by side. Maria was off to one side, badly shaken and bruised up from her trips to the creek. Utah Red had hurt his leg on the way down the slope and was bitching and moaning. Slick Finger Bob had a cut on his face and a knot on one knee. Sandy was still addled and acting goofy from his head impacting against a rock. One Eye had a egg-sized lump on his noggin from Smoke’s thrown rock.

  Marlene finally got von Hausen awake and was pouring hot soup down his throat. Roy Drum had retrieved von Hausen’s boots and pants, falling into the creek himself. The pith helmet was ruined, cracked wide open.

  Gunter knelt down beside von Hausen. “Two dead,” he told him. “Ed Clay’s missing. Several of the men are injured, but not seriously.”

  Von Hausen coughed up creek water. “The spirit of the men?” he questioned.

  “As long as we keep paying them, they’ll continue.”

  “We’ll continue,” von Hausen said. “As long as he has Andrea, we really have no choice, now, do we?”

  Cat Brown rode back in and swung down. “I found Jensen’s tracks. He’s headin’ straight north. The woman’s still with him.”

  “And leaving tracks a fool could follow,” von Hausen said, not putting it as a question.

  “That’s right, boss.”

  “We’ll rest here and push on at first light.”

  Marlene glanced at him. There was a grimness in his voice that she had never heard before. She wondered what it meant.

  “When are you going to turn me loose?” Andrea asked.

  Supper was over, she had the rope around her waist, the knots so tight she had broke
n off her nails trying to loosen them—to no avail.

  “When the hunt is over,” Smoke told her.

  “You mean, after you’ve killed them all.”

  “I didn’t kill that fellow this morning, now, did I?”

  “I could talk to Frederick. I’m sure he would cease immediately once he sees I am safe and unhurt.”

  “Frederick is mine,” Smoke told her. “I’m going to kick his face in.”

  “You!” she said mockingly. “Frederick will destroy you. He is a skilled pugilist.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I’ve seen him fight two men at once and whip them both.”

  “Good for him. In a ring?”

  “Certainly. One of Frederick’s opponents would tire and the other would come in.”

  “Rules to it, hey?”

  “But of course.”

  “I’ll have to say a little prayer before bed tonight that when we do lock horns, Frederick doesn’t beat me up too bad.”

  “Now you’re being sarcastic.”

  “Go to sleep, your ladyship. Tomorrow is going to be very exciting.”

  Sandy Beecher heard a rustling behind him. He left the saddle and stared hard at the thick brush. The mid-morning was cloudy and cool, with the skies looking like rain. The bushes did not move again.

  For the first time he noticed the thin vine that stretched across the trail. From ground level, he could see that it was attached to the bush that had moved. Sandy got to thinking on that. Now if the vine was attached to the bush, that meant that whoever jerked on it was...

  “Oh, hell,” he muttered. “Behind me.”

  “That’s right,” Smoke whispered. “You’re a mighty young man to die.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “You might. That’s up to you.”

  “The others are fanned out all over this mountain, lookin’ for you. You let me get back on my horse, and I’m gone. That’s a promise.”