Warpath of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “I wasn’t on the train, Marshal. I was with my husband and some others in a party that was tracking the criminals. I left the party to accompany the women here for medical care, while the others went on.”

  “And just who is in this tracking party?”

  “My husband, Smoke Jensen; two of our ranch hands; the sheriff of Big Rock, Monte Carson; a Sergeant Bob Guthrie from the Army; and another man named Jed McCulloch from Texas.”

  “Smoke Jensen? The Smoke Jensen?” he asked, eyes wide.

  Sally smiled. “I’m only aware of the one, Marshal. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get these women to the doctor’s office where they can be properly cared for.”

  “Before you go, Mrs. Jensen, do you know which way the outlaws headed when they left the train?”

  “South, I believe,” she said over her shoulder as she tucked a blanket tighter around one of the injured women. “Oh, Marshal,” she added, turning back around. “Smoke asked if once I got here I could notify the U.S. marshal’s office and the Army about the outlaws.”

  Wilkins tipped his hat again. “Consider us notified, ma’am,” he said.

  After Sally and the buckboards headed toward the doctor’s office, Wilkins walked as fast as he could toward the telegraph office. With only two deputies in town, he was badly outnumbered, and he intended to telegraph the nearest Army post to ask for help. He knew he would have little chance of getting any men from Pueblo to join a posse, as they were too intent on digging in the ground for gold to go traipsing off on a chase for outlaws.

  * * *

  Once the telegraph was sent, Wilkins rushed back to his office to round up his deputies. Being a U.S. marshal often meant going up against impossible odds, and Wilkins didn’t intend to let the number of outlaws he was chasing keep him from doing his duty. But just to be sure, he would hold off telling his deputies just how many men they were going to be up against until they were well out of town. No need to give them the bad news until it was absolutely necessary.

  22

  Smoke and his men cut cross-country toward the Sanders ranch. He paced the horses, knowing there was no need to hurry. The Sanderses were beyond help, and he didn’t want to arrive at the ranch with worn-out mounts in case the outlaws were still there.

  As they rode, Jed leaned over in the saddle to talk in a low voice to Sergeant Bob Guthrie. “Bob,” he said, glancing forward at Smoke’s back as he talked, “did you see how fast Smoke was on the draw back there?”

  Bob nodded. “Yep. I blinked an’ he already had his gun out an’ was ridin’ hell-bent for leather at the outlaws.”

  “Not only that, but he fired at full gallop and hit that first man in the neck at more’n twenty yards.” Jed shook his head. “I ain’t never seen shooting like that before, and I’ve ridden with some pretty bad hombres with a six-shooter.”

  Smoke, who had heard every word of the conversation, twisted in his saddle, a grin on his face. “Now, don’t put too high a mark on it, boys,” he said. “You’re right, I hit my target in the neck, but I was aiming at his chest.”

  “Oh,” Jed said, his face burning red at being overheard. “I guess it was a lousy shot then, Smoke. You were only off twelve inches while firing from the back of a running horse at better’n twenty yards.”

  “And as far as the speed of my draw is concerned,” Smoke continued, ignoring Jed’s sarcastic compliment, “I’ve always found it’s more important to be accurate than fast. It doesn’t do much good to be first on the draw if you miss and your opponent doesn’t. It’s the end result that counts in a gunfight.”

  Cal laughed at the exchange. “That’s right. Smoke always says the man who ends up forked-end-up loses, no matter who cleared leather first.”

  Bob glanced at Cal and Pearlie, riding behind Smoke. “Speakin’ of that, that was some pretty fancy shootin’ by you boys too,” he said with admiration.

  Pearlie blushed. “Well, Smoke’s a pretty good teacher. He’s worked with us a lot over the years to make sure we hit what we aim at.”

  Pearlie hesitated, then grinned. “Course, with Cal bein’ such a magnet for lead, he usually gets nicked a place or two in most every gunfight we been in.”

  “That’s not true, Pearlie,” Cal protested. “Why, only last year we had a shootout an’ I wasn’t touched.”

  “What’s that, one out of five or six?” Pearlie asked. “Why, Cal, you got more scars from bullets on you than that old target we got out behind the bunkhouse at the Sugarloaf.”

  “That’s just ’cause you miss the target more’n you hit it when we’re practicin’,” Cal retorted, smiling.

  “I been shot a few times myself, Cal,” Bob said, enjoying the easy camaraderie of the group. “It’s no shame to be hit, ’specially if you live to fight another day.”

  Jed shook his head. “I ain’t never been shot,” he said. “Does it hurt much?”

  Smoke looked over at him. “Not much, at least at first. Early on, the shock of the bullet hitting you deadens the pain. Often, you don’t know how bad it is until later. Then it begins to burn like you’ve been branded.”

  Bob glanced at Jed. “Let’s hope you never find out what it’s like. For me, if I never get shot again, it’ll be too soon.”

  Smoke raised up in his stirrups. “There’s the ranch house up ahead.”

  Bob pulled his Army binoculars out of his saddlebags and rode up next to Smoke to get a look.

  After peering through them for a few minutes, he said, “I don’t see no horses in the corral, but the barn door’s shut an’ they could be in there.”

  Smoke pointed to the south end of the house. “Look over there. It looks like plenty of horses took off that way.”

  “You’re right, Smoke,” Bob said, lowering the glasses. “How can you see that without binoculars?”

  “Smoke can tell the sex of an ant at fifty paces,” Pearlie observed proudly. “He don’t hardly ever need them glasses you use.”

  “It comes from lots of years living with mountain men in the high lonesome,” Smoke said. “You get used to looking at things from far off. I guess the talent stays with you.”

  “How do you want to approach the ranch?” Jed asked.

  “Let’s separate and come at it from different directions,” Smoke said. “That way, if it’s a trap, they won’t be able to get more than one of us in their sights at a time.”

  The men agreed and rode off in four different directions, to approach the ranch house from all sides.

  * * *

  Cal broke off and rode to the barn, keeping the building between him and the ranch house. He drew his pistol, eased the big double doors open, and slipped inside. In a few moments he was back outside, waving to Smoke that the barn was empty.

  Smoke realized there was probably no one inside the house, so he rode up to the front, guns drawn, and kicked the door open.

  Quickly searching the premises, he soon found the cabin to be completely empty. He stepped out on the porch and waved the others in from their positions on all sides of the house.

  Monte Carson climbed the steps. “Any sign of the Sanders couple?” he asked.

  Smoke shook his head. “No, but look there,” he said, pointing to the porch.

  Dried bloodstains could be seen on the wooden planks of the porch, along with blood and pieces of dried meat on the wall next to the door.

  “That don’t look good, Smoke,” Cal said, glancing around.

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Uh-oh,” Pearlie said in a low voice from the front of the porch.

  “What is it?” Smoke asked, walking over to him.

  Pearlie didn’t say anything, but pointed off to one side of the house, where two lumps could be seen under the snow that had accumulated in the front yard of the house.

  Smoke jumped down off the porch and went to the two forms under the snow. He squatted and gently brushed the snow aside, to find Mr. Sanders’s face staring up at him through dead eyes.

  “
Damn!” Smoke muttered. “They didn’t even have the decency to cover them up or bury them.”

  “What’d you expect, Smoke?” Guthrie asked from behind him. “They killed dozens of my men an’ left ’em for the buzzards and wolves. I’ve told you before, these men are little better than animals.”

  Smoke turned angry eyes up at Guthrie. “Then that’s how we’ll treat them. We’ll hunt them and kill them like the animals they are.”

  “When do you want to start?” Guthrie asked, a half-crazy gleam in his eyes.

  Smoke stood up and brushed snow off his trousers. “First, we have to bury Mr. and Mrs. Sanders. Then we need to get some rest for us and the horses.”

  “And some hot food wouldn’t hurt none neither,” Pearlie said, glancing toward the cabin, as if anxious to see what was left in the kitchen.

  Smoke smiled. “Yeah, you’re right, Pearlie. Like they say, an army travels on its stomach.”

  “If the soldiers were all like Pearlie, they’d never get anywhere ’cause they’d be stoppin’ to eat every thirty minutes,” Cal said derisively.

  “Well, Mr. Smart Mouth, since you’re not hungry, I’ll just eat your share of the grub,” Pearlie said, striding up the stairs and into the cabin.

  “Like hell you will!” Cal said, following close behind him.

  23

  U.S. Marshal Ace Wilkins rode slowly down a mountain trail that led south from Pueblo, keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of a campfire or other evidence of the presence of the outlaw band he was hunting.

  Behind him rode his two deputies, Louis McCarthy and Samuel Bogart, men who were barely out of their teens but who felt it was exciting to be deputy marshals, a thought that Marshal Wilkins knew would soon sour as they found that the job usually meant long hours on a lonesome trail doing work that was ninety percent boring and ten percent terrifying.

  The three lawmen had with them five privates in the U.S. Army, all that the commanding officer of the post nearest Pueblo had said he could spare. He gave as a reason continuing troubles with renegade Pawnee Indians, who’d been raiding some mining camps in the mountains north of Pueblo.

  From the looks of the men sent to ride with him, Wilkins was fairly certain the captain in charge had sent his most useless troops, men who would probably be more trouble than they were worth if push came to shove.

  After hearing the report from Sally Jensen, Wilkins had decided to make a wide sweep to the south, in hopes of getting ahead of the outlaws and catching up to them before they had time to get to any nearby ranches or mines and cause more deaths.

  He’d twice had to twist in his saddle to warn the soldiers against making so much noise. They were talking and laughing about their good luck in going on a hunting expedition with the marshal and his deputies, instead of the boring assignments of searching frozen mountain passes for whiskeyed-up redskins.

  * * *

  Just as he was getting ready to call a halt to the search for the day and make camp, Wilkins’s nose twitched. He thought he’d caught a whiff of smoke on the air.

  It didn’t smell like campfire smoke, more like a cigarette burning. The sun was almost down, and the air was gloomy with presundown semidarkness and the persistent ground fog that rose every evening as temperatures fell.

  Off to their right, Wilkins saw the rosy glow of a lit cigarette among bushes next to the trail. With a start, he realized they were riding into an ambush.

  He simultaneously drew his pistol and jerked his horse’s head around while yelling, “Look out! It’s a trap!”

  Men stepped out of the forest and underbrush on either side of the trail and opened fire as Wilkins spurred his horse off the trail and over a ledge to a steep, precipitous incline.

  The deputies managed to get their pistols out and fire a few shots before they were hit.

  Louis McCarthy took a slug in his right shoulder, twisting him half around in the saddle so that the next bullet hit him dead center in the middle of his back, between his shoulder blades, pitching him over his horse’s rump to land facedown in the snow.

  Samuel Bogart wasn’t so lucky. He was hit twice in the stomach, doubling him over his saddle horn and making his horse rear up and charge straight into the outlaws’ guns. Bogart was hit four more times before he fell off his horse almost at the feet of the outlaws who were standing in the trail drawing down on the men.

  Two of the soldiers, who were riding in front, were both wounded by multiple gunshots before they could clear leather. Both died in their saddles before they hit the ground.

  The three soldiers riding in the rear never hesitated. As one, they whirled their mounts around and skedaddled back up the trail, leaning over their horses’ heads and whipping them with their reins as fast as they could. The last man in line took a slug in his left buttock, but he kept riding, never even feeling the blow in his terror.

  Marshal Wilkins’s horse ran and jumped, trying to keep its balance as it half-stumbled down the steep hill next to the trail. Bullets whined around Wilkins’s head, buzzing like a swarm of angry bees, as he did all he could to stay in the saddle. He knew if he was thrown off, he was a dead man.

  Fifty yards down the hill, his mount’s left hoof hit a hole, covered by deep snow, and snapped his leg like a stick.

  The horse swallowed his head and sent Wilkins flying ass over elbows out of the saddle. A small Norfolk pine broke his fall, and he landed in a snowbank covering some bushes.

  He lay still behind the bush as bullets pocked the snow around him, two of which hit and killed his horse. Wilkins ducked his head and cursed silently when the bronc screamed in pain in its death agony.

  Two of the outlaws started down the hill to see if the marshal was dead, but stopped when one of the men sprained his ankle badly on the steep slope.

  “Come on, men,” that outlaw said as he clambered painfully back up the hill, limping on his injured foot. “If he’s not dead, he’ll freeze to death up here without no horse.”

  As they disappeared out of sight over the edge of the slope, Wilkins moved on hands and knees off to one side to get behind a large pine tree. He’d lost his pistol in his mad rush down the hill, and was trying to decide if he should make a run for his horse to get his long gun out of his rifle boot when he heard a scream from above that chilled his blood.

  A voice drifted down out of the darkness. “Well, looky here, boys. One of those star-packers is still alive.”

  A raspy, hoarse voice cried, “No!” followed shortly by the single report of a gunshot.

  “Damn!” Wilkins whispered to himself. He shook his head, knowing both his deputies must’ve been killed in the attack. So much for the glory and excitement of being a marshal, he thought bitterly as he eased over to his horse and slipped his rifle out of its scabbard. He grabbed his saddlebags, threw them over one shoulder, put the rifle over the other one, and started walking away from the trail.

  If it was the last thing he ever did, he was going to make those outlaws pay for what they’d done today, he vowed as he trudged through knee-deep snow down the mountain.

  * * *

  Smoke was taking his watch, sitting on the porch of the Sanders cabin, smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee to keep awake while the other men slept.

  The moon was almost full and cast a ghostly glow over the snow and trees of the mountainside. On any other occasion, Smoke would’ve been thinking about how beautiful the high lonesome is in winter. But this night, his heart was outraged at the fate of the Sanders couple, two people who’d never done any harm to anyone and who’d just wanted to live out their lives together in the beauty of the mountains around their ranch.

  His jaw muscles were bunched and tight as he sipped his coffee and smoked, thinking of how sweet it would be when he finally caught up with the bandits.

  Suddenly, his eyes caught movement in the trees above the cabin. He was on his feet in an instant, his Henry rifle in his hands as he stared at the trail leading down to the cabin from the mountain.


  He saw three figures on horseback riding as rapidly as the scant light would allow, all leaning forward as if their lives depended on getting wherever they were going in a helluva hurry.

  Smoke reached behind him and banged once on the door to alert the others they had company coming, then knelt down behind the rail running around the porch and placed his rifle on it for steady aim. He eared back the hammer and waited to see what would happen.

  When the men got within a hundred yards, the one in front yelled, “Yo! The cabin!”

  Smoke stood up, holding his rifle in plain sight, letting the moonlight sparkle off the barrel.

  “Hold it right there, gents!” he hollered back.

  “Don’t shoot, mister,” one of the men on horseback screamed as they all jerked their mounts to a halt in front of the house. “We’re soldiers!”

  “Get down off your horses and approach the cabin with your hands held high,” Smoke commanded just as Monte and the others came out of the front door of the house with guns in their hands.

  The three men, one of them limping badly, walked slowly toward the house with their hands up.

  “Monte,” Smoke said, “get some lights on, would you?”

  “Sure, Smoke,” Monte said, and turned back into the house to light some lanterns in the parlor.

  When the men got to the porch, the leader said, “We were ambushed a couple of hours ago by some escaped convicts.” He inclined his head at the man standing next to him. “My friend here took a bullet in the ass an’ he needs some help.”

  Smoke took in their Army uniforms and saw that their saddles also had Army insignia on them, so he lowered his rifle and said, “Come on in, boys. We’ll get you some hot coffee and food and see what we can do about your friend’s wound.”

  * * *

  The men were given hot coffee and some reheated biscuits and beans, and while they ate, Pearlie worked on the wound in the injured man’s butt. The bullet had gone through the fleshy part of his hip muscle and posed no real problem.

  “What’s your name?” Smoke asked the one who seemed to be the leader of the men, though all were privates.