Warpath of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “So am I, Army,” the cowboy replied. “So am I.”

  15

  Smoke Jensen and Pearlie were riding in the back of a buckboard, throwing bales of summer hay off for the cattle to eat, while Cal drove the wagon.

  “I can’t hardly believe we got snow coverin’ the ground so early in the season,” Pearlie complained, straightening up and sleeving sweat off his brow.

  Smoke glanced at heavy dark clouds covering the sky. “Yeah, looks like it’s gonna be a cold winter this year.”

  Cal laughed from the front of the wagon. “Hell, I ain’t never seen a warm one up here in the high lonesome, Smoke,” he said.

  “I told you when I saw how fat the squirrels were getting from eating all those acorns, it was going to be a particularly bad one this year,” Smoke said.

  “Hold on a minute, Cal,” Pearlie said. “I want to build me a smoke ’fore you take off again.”

  Cal stood up and climbed over the seat to join Smoke and Pearlie in the back of the buckboard. “I think I’ll have one with you,” he said.

  “Be careful you don’t set this hay to burning,” Smoke said.

  “Hell,” Pearlie replied as he put a lucifer to his butt, “least it’d keep us warm.”

  Smoke had started to reply when he noticed a trio of riders coming toward them across his ranch.

  “Looks like we got company coming,” he observed, sitting on a bale and pulling a long, black cigar out of his pocket.

  He’d just gotten it lit when Sheriff Monte Carson and two other men reined in next to the wagon.

  “Howdy, Monte,” Smoke called. “What brings you out here on such a cold morning?”

  “Smoke, I got some bad news. This here is Sergeant Bob Guthrie, from Utah, and Jed McCulloch, from Texas.”

  Smoke looked at the two men Monte introduced. He liked what he saw. Guthrie was of medium height, broad-shouldered, with a square body and a face wrinkled from years under the sun. McCulloch was tall and lanky, with a wiry build, sky-blue eyes, dark, unruly hair under a large, Texas-style Stetson hat, and a grin that made him look like a kid in his teens.

  Smoke smiled. “You any relation to Big Jake McCulloch down in Texas?” he asked the Texan.

  Jed’s lips curled in an answering grin and he nodded. “He’s my uncle.”

  “I met Big Jake a couple of years ago when I was down at the King Ranch getting some breeding stock. Jake’s ranch is only slightly smaller than King’s,” Smoke said.

  Jed nodded. “That’s right, but Jake’s has got better grass, and better stock.”

  Smoke laughed. “So I hear.”

  He turned his attention back to Monte Carson. “What’s the bad news, Monte?”

  “You remember those escaped outlaws I told you about last week? The ones escaped from the territorial prison in Utah?”

  “Uh-huh,” Smoke said.

  “Well, Bob and Jed here have been on their trail. Seems they stole a train up in Crested Butte a couple of days ago headed toward Pueblo.”

  “Stole a train?” Smoke asked. “Don’t you mean robbed a train?”

  “No,” Guthrie replied. “They stopped the train and got on board, including their horses. After they rode it for about a hundred miles, they put the male passengers off, but kept the women.”

  Smoke’s eyes hardened and his jaw muscles tightened. He knew what that meant. While most men of the West adhered to a code of conduct that kept women and children safe, he knew there were some so depraved they would prey on anyone that crossed their paths.

  “How’d you two come to be on their trail?” Smoke asked.

  Guthrie’s face got somber. “It was my command sent after ’em in Utah. They ambushed us up in the mountains an’ killed all my men, including the lieutenant in charge. I been doggin’ their trail ever since.”

  Smoke’s eyes drifted to Jed.

  “I was one of the passengers on the train they highjacked,” he said. “When Bob here picked us up after the outlaws put us off the train, I decided to ride along. I don’t much care for men who abuse women and children.”

  “The train carrying the outlaws roared through Big Rock without stoppin’ early yesterday morning,” Monte added. “Late last night, Bob and Jed came followin’ ’em in their own train.”

  “We were dead tired after riding for almost thirty-six hours straight,” Guthrie said. “We decided to take a short break for some food and much needed sleep. When we started out this morning, we found they’d dynamited the tracks behind them, evidently to keep anyone from following ’em. The sheriff here said if we wanted to track ’em on horseback, there wasn’t anybody knew the country better’n you, Mr. Jensen.”

  Smoke looked at Monte. “You wire Pueblo to be on the lookout for the outlaws?” he asked.

  Monte nodded. “I told ’em to put up a barrier on the tracks to keep ’em from blasting through town. If those bastards stay on the train till it gets to Pueblo, they’re gonna be in for a surprise.”

  Smoke stroked his chin, thinking. “It’s about thirty miles cross-country to Pueblo, more like fifty the way the tracks go.”

  “I don’t figure they’ll stay on the train all the way to Pueblo,” Guthrie said. “So far, the man who’s been leadin’ ’em has been pretty smart. He’s bound to know they’ll be waitin’ for him somewhere’s down the road.”

  “Who’s the man in charge of the gang?” Pearlie asked.

  Guthrie looked at him. “Ozark Jack Berlin,” he answered shortly, frowning as if the name left a bad taste in his mouth.

  “Ozark Jack Berlin the famous train robber?” Cal asked, his eyes wide. Cal was addicted to dime novels, and followed closely the exploits of famous men of the West, both good and bad.

  “Yeah,” Guthrie replied. “He’s hard an’ mean as they come, an’ he knows trains.”

  Smoke climbed up onto the seat of the buckboard. “Come on back to the house,” he said. “We’ll get some food and provisions and then we’ll see what we can do about Mr. Berlin and his men.”

  As they started off toward Smoke’s cabin, Jed said, “We might ought’a take some extra provisions along, just in case we find the women alive.”

  Smoke nodded. “I’ll ask my wife Sally to come along. She’s pretty handy at fixing people up who’ve been hurt.”

  Guthrie protested, “This ain’t no job to take a woman along on, Mr. Jensen.”

  Monte Carson laughed. “Wait until you meet Sally,” he said. “She ain’t a woman to take no for an answer if she thinks somebody needs her help.”

  “Still . . .” Guthrie started.

  “Don’t worry about it being too tough a job for Sally,” Smoke said. “She came up here to teach school when there wasn’t hardly nothing but Indians and mountain men and a few settlers in these parts. She can handle anything thrown at her, and then some.”

  * * *

  Sally came out on the cabin’s porch when she heard the men ride up.

  “Hello, Monte,” she called, wiping her hands on an apron tied around her waist.

  “Mornin’ Sally,” Monte replied, tipping his hat as he climbed down off his horse.

  “Sally, this here is Jed McCulloch and Sergeant Bob Guthrie,” Smoke said, introducing the two visitors.

  “Pleased to meet ya, ma’am,” Jed said, while Guthrie touched his hat and nodded.

  “Come in, gentlemen,” Sally said. “It’s a little late for breakfast, but I’ve got a batch of bear sign hot out of the oven and a fresh pot of coffee.”

  Pearlie jumped down off the wagon and walked straight past Sally toward the door to the cabin.

  Cal, climbing down more slowly, said, “You boys better make tracks toward the kitchen if you want any of Miss Sally’s bear sign. If we leave Pearlie alone in there, he’s liable to eat ’em all ’fore we can get through the door.”

  “Bear sign?” Jed asked, a puzzled smile on his face.

  “I think you call them pan dulce down in Texas,” Smoke said. “They’re sweet as molasses and
light as a cloud the way Sally makes them.”

  After the men were all seated around the kitchen table, with a platter of bear sign and mugs of steaming coffee in front of them, Smoke filled Sally in on what Monte and the two men had told him about the outlaws.

  Sally’s face became serious when she heard about the women being kept as hostages. “Oh, dear,” she said, a hand to her mouth. “Those poor women.”

  “I’m going to lead Monte and the boys cross-country to see if we can intercept the train, Sally,” Smoke explained. “I think you might ought to come with us, bringing your medical kit, so’s you can help take care of the womenfolk if they’re still alive.”

  She nodded. “You’re right, Smoke. I’ll go get my things together while you men finish your food.”

  She got up from the table. “Pearlie, if you and Cal can tear yourself away from the bear sign, would you get a couple of horses out of the remuda?” she asked. “I’ll need them as pack animals for the supplies we’re going to need to go cross-country.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Pearlie grunted around a mouthful of doughnuts and coffee.

  “How about that buckboard?” Jed asked. “Wouldn’t it be better?”

  Smoke wagged his head. “The country we’re gonna be traveling over won’t be suitable for a wagon,” he said. “It’s gonna be hard enough to get the horses through the snow in some of the passes.”

  “You mean, we’re going up over the mountains?” Guthrie asked, a look of surprise on his face.

  “If you want to make up for lost time, it’s the only way to go and have any chance of catching those men.”

  Guthrie fingered his Army overcoat. “I’m afraid I didn’t come dressed for that kind of trip.”

  Cal grinned. “Don’t worry, Sergeant. We got plenty of cold-weather duds in the bunkhouse. Pearlie and me’ll fix you up where you’ll be warm as toast.”

  * * *

  An hour later, with extra canteens filled with hot coffee and a sack of fried chicken Sally had left over from dinner the night before tied to the packhorses, the group took off toward mountain peaks in the distance.

  The weather was cold, but sunny, with the temperature hovering in the midforties.

  “Leastways, there don’t appear to be any snow on the way,” Guthrie said.

  Smoke inclined his head toward the mountains, where the white, snow-covered peaks were partially obscured by roiling, black clouds.

  “Not for another six or seven hours,” he said, “but I expect along about nightfall, we’re gonna get a storm that’ll drop a couple of feet of snow by morning.”

  “How can you tell?” Jed asked.

  Sally laughed. “Smoke spent his formative years living up in the high lonesome with an old mountain man named Preacher,” she said. “He learned to read the clouds and wind like some men learn to read books.”

  Smoke nodded. “Living up in the mountains, if you don’t learn to foretell the weather, you don’t live through your first winter.”

  16

  Ozark Jack Berlin made his way through the passenger cars until he climbed into the engine compartment. He nodded hello to Jack McGraw, who was busy shoveling small logs from the tender into the furnace of the steam engine, and stepped up next to the man at the controls of the big engine. He leaned over and yelled into the engineer’s ear, “Yo, I want you to stop the train when we get about ten miles north of Pueblo.”

  The engineer looked over his shoulder at Berlin, fear evident in his eyes. “What you want’a stop out here for? There ain’t nothin’ out here but snow an’ mountains.”

  Berlin sighed. He knew the man thought he was going to be killed when the train stopped.

  He patted him on the shoulder and forced a good-humored grin on his face. “Don’t worry, old-timer. Me an’ my men are just gonna get off the train. You don’t have nothin’ to worry about.”

  The engineer nodded, clearly not convinced, and reached up to pull the throttle lever back a few notches, causing the train to begin to slow down.

  Berlin turned his back to the engineer and said in a low voice to McGraw, “Soon’s the train comes to a stop, put a bullet in him.”

  McGraw winked and stood up, dusting wood dust and bark off his hands as he leaned back against the wall of the compartment.

  Berlin left through the rear door and made his way back toward the passenger cars.

  As the train slowed more and more, he made his way from car to car, telling his men to get their gear together. They were going to make tracks as soon as the train came to a halt.

  While he walked among his men, even Berlin, who was no stranger to violence or cruelty, was surprised by the condition of the women his men had been occupying their time with. Two were dead, their bodies covered with ugly black and blue marks showing they had been sorely tested before they died.

  The remainder were either unconscious, or crying and moaning pitiably, most not in much better shape than those who’d been raped to death.

  Just before the train came to a complete stop, Berlin heard several gunshots from the direction of the engine.

  “Damn!” he muttered, drawing his pistol and running toward the front of the train. “It shouldn’t’ve taken McGraw that many shots to kill the engineer,” he said to himself as he busted through doors on his way.

  When he got there, the train groaned to a stop, the engine idling loudly in the quiet mountain air.

  “What the hell happened?” Berlin hollered when he found McGraw leaning out of the compartment window, his still-smoking pistol in his hand.

  McGraw glanced back over his shoulder. “When I turned my head for a minute to look out the window, the engineer dove out the door and hit the ground running,” he said.

  Berlin shook his head. “He must’ve figured you was gonna shoot him,” he mused.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” McGraw answered.

  “Did you get him?”

  “Nah. By the time I got my gun out and fired, he was too far away.” McGraw grinned. “He run pretty fast for an old fart, though.”

  “Well, it can’t be helped.”

  “Why’d you want him shot anyway?” McGraw asked. “He ain’t given us no trouble nor nothin’.”

  “’Cause I didn’t want him taking the train into Pueblo an’ tellin’ the authorities ’bout us gettin’ out here,” Berlin said.

  “Oh,” McGraw said. “Well, if that’s all that’s bothering you, I can fix the engine where he won’t be able to get it started any time soon.”

  “How?”

  McGraw shrugged. “I’ll just shut it down and drain all the water out of it. He won’t be able to make any steam until another train comes along and transfers some water into the boiler.”

  Berlin nodded. “That’s a good idea, Jack. The way we fixed those tracks back at Big Rock, another train won’t be along for several days anyway.”

  McGraw grinned. “And without no food nor water, the engineer and the girls will probably be frozen to death by then. Won’t nobody be left alive to tell ’em which way we went or when we left.”

  Berlin slapped McGraw on the back. “Come on, Jack,” he said, “get your gear together an’ let’s get the hell outta here ’fore it starts to snow again.”

  McGraw began turning switches on the engine. “I’ll be there soon’s I turn this thing off and drain the water.”

  * * *

  In less than an hour, the men had their horses off the train and saddled up and ready to go.

  Blue Owl came up to Berlin, an evil glint in his eyes. “You want me to get back on the train and kill the women?” he asked.

  Berlin shook his head. “No, let the bitches freeze to death,” he said. “It’ll be a lot slower for them that way.”

  Blue Owl, who had a deep and abiding hatred for all women, nodded, his lips curling up in a smile. “Yeah. Why let them off easy with a bullet or a knife when we can let them die slow and painful?”

  “Exactly my thoughts,” Berlin said. He jerked his mount’s hea
d around and waved his arm in the air. “Come on, men. Let’s ride!”

  * * *

  It was heavy going for Berlin and his gang. The trails that ran between the mountain passes were clogged with snow that reached almost to their mounts’ chests, and they’d only managed to travel six miles by the time the sun began to set.

  Just when he thought they were going to have to make camp in the open, an unappetizing thought with temperatures plunging to well below freezing, Blue Owl called out, “Hey, Boss, look over there!”

  In the distance, barely visible through the ground fog that was beginning to form as the temperature dropped, was a log cabin nestled among a grove of pine trees. The roof had several holes in it, and the mud caked between the logs was absent in places, but at least they’d be able to get out of the worst of the weather.

  When Berlin kicked open the door, the smell of the animals who’d made the place a temporary home was strong and musty.

  “We’re in luck,” Berlin said when he spied an old potbellied stove in a corner. “Blue Owl, send some of the men out to gather wood and bring in some of our provisions. At least we’ll be able to keep warm an’ fix up some coffee an’ grub.”

  Before long, with all the men crammed into a space meant for four or five, and with the stove glowing a dull red, the cabin began to heat up to a comfortable level.

  While some of the men patched the worst of the holes in the walls with pine needles and branches to keep the wind out, others used shovels they’d brought along to dig down in the snow and uncover enough grass for the horses to eat. Leaving the animals covered with blankets to keep out the worst of the cold, the men gathered inside to drink hot coffee and eat jerked beef and beans cooked on the stove.

  After they’d eaten their fill, most of the men got their sleeping blankets and spread out on the floor to grab some shut-eye, lying almost shoulder to shoulder in the small cabin.

  Berlin took a final mug of coffee, lit a cigar, and motioned for Blue Owl and Sam Cook to follow him outside where they could talk.

  He turned an old barrel upside down and placed it against the south wall of the cabin, out of the frigid wind blowing from the north.