Warpath of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “After we whupped the Apache, there wasn’t nothin’ else to do ’cept drill and the like. So when it come time, I took my discharge and moved on.”

  “But you are willing to come back in now? To serve in whatever capacity I assign you, and to recognize the authority of the officers appointed over you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Dingo said. “I know what armyin’ is all about.”

  “Why do you want to serve now?”

  “Well, sir, I don’t know ’bout the rest of these boys, but after what them heathens did to Mrs. Burke and those children, I’m by God ready to start killin’ me some Injuns.”

  “Hold up your right hand,” Covington said.

  Dingo did as instructed.

  “You swear to follow the orders of those in authority over you, and to defend your state and your fellow citizens against all enemies, foreign and domestic?”

  “Yeah, that is, yes, sir, I do,” Dingo said.

  Covington stuck his hand out to shake with Dingo. “Welcome to Covington’s militia, First Sergeant Dingo.”

  Dingo grinned broadly. “First Sergeant?”

  “Yes, First Sergeant. I feel that is the best way to utilize your experience.”

  * * *

  At the far end of the bar, a small man with weasel eyes finished the rest of his beer, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

  “Another one?” the bartender asked.

  “No,” the small man replied. “I’ve got to go.” Turning, he left the bar, then pushed through the batwing doors and walked out into the street. As he headed toward the livery, he took out a plug of chewing tobacco and stuck it in his mouth. As a result, he had worked up a good spit by the time he got there.

  Standing just inside a Dutch door, looking through the open top, was Pigiron McCord.

  “Did you see him, Wheeler?” Pigiron asked.

  “Yeah, I seen him. Jensen’s in there, all right.”

  Pigiron smiled broadly. “Good. Good. Now it’s time to pay him back for what he did.”

  “Pigiron, you sure you want to do this? I mean, Tatum told us to just hang around to see what was goin’ on, then get back to him. He didn’t say nothin’ ’bout killin’ anyone.”

  “If you got no stomach for it you can go on back, far as I’m concerned,” Pigiron said. “But I aim to kill that bastard Smoke Jensen.” Pigiron opened the door so Wheeler could come into the livery.

  The three men in the livery stable were Pigiron Mc-Cloud, Jason Harding, and Dirk Wheeler. Because Pigiron didn’t want to be recognized, he’d sent Wheeler into the saloon to see if Jensen was there. Harding, who had had his own run-in in the saloon, had also stayed away. He was stretched out on the barn floor, his head on a sack of grain and his hat pulled down over his eyes.

  “Seems to me like killin’ a man is a long way to go just to get back at him for whuppin’ you,” Wheeler said.

  “Well, now, that’s just ’cause you didn’t see how bad ole Pigiron here got his ass whupped,” Harding said from under his hat.

  “I told you, he got in a lucky punch,” Pigiron said, turning away from the open window and glaring at Harding. “Besides which, you ain’t got a lot of room to talk. Seems to me like you got your head bashed in as well. Hell, I’d think you would be with me on this.”

  “I am with you,” Harding said. “I’m here with you, ain’t I? I just want to make sure nothin’ goes wrong. I asked some of the boys back at Risco about Smoke Jensen. And from what they tell me, he ain’t a man you want to mess with. And I don’t aim to get myself kilt before we get some of that money Tatum’s been talkin’ about.”

  “There ain’t none of us goin’ to get kilt if we all stick together,” Pigiron said.

  “What’s goin’ on over there in that saloon anyhow?” Pigiron asked. “They’s an awful lot of people just goin’ in and out.”

  “They’re raisin’ an army,” Wheeler said. “hey’s a man there in a Army suit signin’ folks up to go fight the Injuns.”

  Pigiron laughed. “Is that a fact? Well, you got to hand it to ole Tatum. He was right about that. After these fellas get all dressed up in their Army suits and march around an’ salute for a while, they’re goin’ to get tired of playin’ army. When that happens, they’re goin’ to attack some Injuns some’ers. And soon as they do that, well, we got us some customers for our rifles.”

  “Yeah, well, I wish Jensen would get back out here so we can get this over with. I’m hungry,” Harding said.

  “You’re always hungry, or sleepy, or thirsty, or gotta piss or somethin’,” Pigiron said. “I swear, you’d bitch if they hung you with a new rope.”

  Harding stood up and dusted himself off. “I seen Muley Thomas hung with a new rope,” he said. “Ole Muley didn’t bitch about it. He didn’t do nothin’, ’cept maybe twitch a little.”

  Wheeler shuddered. “Don’t talk like that,” he said. “I don’t like to hear that kind’a talk.”

  Harding held his fist alongside his neck, then tilted his head and ran his tongue out in a mockery of someone being hanged, while making the sound of a death rattle. He laughed at his own impression.

  “I said, I don’t like that kind’a talk!” Wheeler said.

  “Shhh!” Pigiron hissed. “Quiet! Here he comes.”

  “We goin’ to shoot him, Pigiron? Or are we goin’ to brace him?” Wheeler asked.

  Harding raised his pistol and aimed it at Smoke. “I say let’s just shoot the son of a bitch and be done with it,” he said.

  “No,” Pigiron said. “I want him to know who it was shot him. I want my ugly face to be the last thing that son of a bitch sees before he dies.”

  “Pigiron, I don’t know,” Harding said. “I told you, I’ve heard a lot about him since we run into him. They say he’s faster’n greased lightning.”

  “I ain’t no virgin in this business,” Pigiron said. “I think I can beat him.”

  “You thought you could whup him too,” Harding said. “But look what happened.”

  “I told you, he got in a lucky punch. Anyway, there are three of us. I don’t care how fast the son of a bitch is. He can’t take all three of us. I say we brace him.”

  “You brace him,” Wheeler said. “I ain’t goin’ to.”

  “What?”

  “You want to kill the son of a bitch from here, I’m with you,” Wheeler said. “But if you’re countin’ on me walkin’ out there in the street and callin’ him out, you goin’ to have to do it without me.”

  “And without me,” Harding added.

  “You two yellow-bellied bastards!” Pigiron swore.

  “We kill him from here, or you go it alone,” Harding said.

  In frustration, Pigiron pinched the bridge of his nose. “All right,” he finally said. “If that’s the way it is to be, then that’s the way it’ll be. I don’t care how we kill the son of a bitch, as long as we kill him.”

  The three men, in agreement now as to their tactics, walked back to the Dutch door and looked through the top window. Jensen was nowhere to be seen.

  “What the hell? What happened to him?” Pigiron asked.

  “There he is over there, going into the hardware store,” Wheeler said.

  By the time Pigiron saw him, Jensen was just going into the store, with the door closing behind him.

  “All right, we’ll get him when he comes out,” Pigiron said.

  10

  “I’ve got everything you asked for, Smoke,” the hardware clerk said. “Beans, bacon, coffee, sugar, salt, flour, three boxes of .44’s, three boxes of .44-40’s, and two boxes of lucifers. That comes to three dollars and twenty-five cents.” The clerk put everything into two boxes. “Will you need help carrying that out to your buckboard?”

  “No, thank you, I can get it,” Smoke said. He paid for his purchases, then picked up the two boxes and headed for the door. The clerk beat him to the door and held it open for him.

  * * *

  “Here he comes!” Pigiron said to the others, and t
hey pulled the hammers back on their pistols as they took aim. “Wait until he gets into the buckboard. It’ll be a closer shot.”

  They watched as Smoke put his boxes in back, then untied the reins and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Suddenly, the stagecoach rolled into town, the six-team hitch sweating and breathing hard as they trotted the final hundred yards. The stage was filled with passengers and piled high on top with luggage and cargo. Its route to the stage depot went between the livery and the hardware store.

  “Damn it!” Pigiron swore, lowering his pistol until the stage passed. They waited for a moment. Then when the stage was gone, they raised their pistols again, but Smoke wasn’t there.

  “What the hell? Where is he? What happened to him?” Pigiron asked.

  “There he is, down there,” Wheeler said.

  Smoke had driven away, matching the speed of the stagecoach all the way down to the depot. As a result, he had been shielded by the coach until he was now too far down the street for any kind of a shot.

  “Now what?” Wheeler asked.

  Sighing in disgust, Pigiron put the pistol back in his holster. “Let’s get on over to the saloon and see what we can find out about this army they’re raisin’,” he said.

  “Thought you didn’t want to go to the saloon,” Wheeler said.

  “I said I didn’t want to be seen by Jensen. Now that he’s gone, it don’t matter whether I’m seen or not.”

  “The saloon sounds good to me,” Harding said. He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah, I like that idea. In fact, it’s your best idea yet.”

  * * *

  When Louis Longmont saw Pigiron and Harding come into his saloon, he got up from his table and walked over to confront them.

  “I’ll take your money, McCord,” he said, “but I won’t take anything from you. Stay away from my girls, and don’t start anything.”

  “All me ’n my pards want is a couple of drinks,” Pigiron said. “We ain’t lookin’ for no trouble.”

  Louis looked toward the bartender, then nodded. “You can serve them,” he said.

  As the three stood at the bar drinking, they listened to several of the conversations, hoping to hear something they could take back to Tatum. Much of the conversation was about the militia company being formed, but Pigiron heard something that caught his attention right away.

  “I would’a thought Smoke Jensen would’a joined up with the militia,” someone said. “Him an’ ole Tom Burke been friends for a long time.”

  “You heard him say he was goin’ to help in his own way, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know what that means.”

  “I figure it means he’ll be goin’ out on his own to find whoever done this.”

  “On his own? What can he do by his ownself?”

  “What can he do? He can track, hunt, shoot, and live out in the mountains better’n anyone I ever heard of. If I was the one that done this, I’d rather have two companies of milita after me than to have Smoke Jensen doggin’ my trail.”

  “When you think he’ll leave?”

  “He’s probably left by now. I was over to the hardware store while ago, and Mr. Clark told me that Smoke bought a lot of provisions to take with him.”

  “What about Mrs. Jensen? You think she’ll stay out at the ranch by herself? Or will she come stay in town till he gets back.”

  “Sally? Oh, she’ll stay out there and run the ranch.” The speaker chuckled. “And probably do as good a job with it as any man would.”

  “Probably. I’ll say this for her. She’s a good-lookin’ woman.”

  The first speaker chuckled. “I agree, but if you ever say that around Smoke, you better make damn certain he don’t misunderstand it.”

  The second speaker chuckled as well. “You didn’t have to tell me that. You think I’m some kind of fool?”

  “Well, now,” Pigiron said very quietly, “That’s good information to know.”

  “Beg pardon?” Wheeler asked.

  “Never mind,” Pigiron said. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  * * *

  As Smoke and Pearlie were saddling their horses, Cal was leaning against the fence, his arms folded across his chest, looking on with an expression of disappointment.

  “Cal, did anyone ever tell you that if you make a bad face, it could freeze like that?” Pearlie asked with a laugh. “Cheer up.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re going,” Cal said. “I have to stay here.”

  Smoke tightened his cinch, then sighing, looked over at Cal. “I’ve explained it to you, Cal,” he said. “Whoever did this, whether it’s renegade Indians or just a gang of outlaws, might still be around. If they double back while we’re tracking them, we could miss them. That would leave Sugarloaf vulnerable. I’d feel a lot better if you were here with Sally.”

  “I know,” Cal said. “And I’m honored that you trust me with it. But if nothing happens here, and you find them, then I’m going to miss out on it.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it,” Pearlie promised.

  “I’d rather hear it from Smoke. If you tell it, no doubt it will be a pack of lies.”

  “Well, yeah, it probably will be,” Pearlie said. “But it’ll be a lot better story than you can get from a dime novel.”

  All three laughed.

  “What is this?” Sally asked, coming out to join them. “Here I expected to see long faces, sad because you’re going away. Instead, you are laughing. Are you that happy to get away from me?”

  “You know better than that,” Smoke said, putting his arm around her. They kissed, then Sally held up a little bag.

  “I thought you might like a sack full of sinkers for your trip.”

  “You made doughnuts?” Pearlie asked, reaching for the sack.

  “I did. If I told you to go easy on them, to try and make them last a couple of days, would I just be wasting my breath?”

  “Ma’am?” Pearlie replied, the word muffled by a mouthful of doughnut. Even as he answered, he was reaching for a second one.

  Sally laughed. “Never mind. Smoke, if you plan on getting any of those, you’d better carry the sack yourself.”

  “Looks that way, doesn’t it?” Smoke said, taking the sack from Pearlie and sticking it down into his own saddlebag.

  “Don’t worry, Cal, I held some back for us,” she said.

  Cal grinned broadly. “Well, for once I won’t have to fight Pearlie for them.”

  Smoke and Sally kissed again. Then Smoke swung into the saddle. He looked down at his wife.

  “I don’t have any idea when I’ll be back,” he said. “Just look for me when you see me. And take care.”

  “I will,” Sally replied. “Smoke?”

  Smoke had just started to turn his horse and he stopped to look back at her.

  “Be careful?”

  “Careful? Damn, now there’s an idea. I hadn’t even thought about that,” he said, teasing her.

  “Oh!” Sally said in an exasperated tone of voice. “Go on, the sooner you leave the better.”

  Laughing, Smoke urged his horse ahead and it broke quickly and easily into a trot.

  * * *

  Smoke and Pearlie were over at Timber Notch, preparing to leave on their hunt for whoever had raided the ranch. Pearlie was sitting on the edge of the porch of the Burke house, already into the little bag of doughnuts Sally had made for them. Tom Burke was cinching up the saddle on his horse, while Smoke was kneeling by the steps of the porch, studying the dirt.

  Reaching down, he picked something up, then examined it closely. “Well, now. It looks like they didn’t get away clean,” Smoke said.

  “What have you found?” Tom asked.

  “Do you have a shotgun in the house?”

  “Yes, a double-barreled Greener ten-gauge. At first I thought maybe they stole it, but I found it out by what’s left of the barn.”

  “Did you keep it loaded with double-aught buck?”

&
nbsp; “As a matter of fact I did. Why?”

  “Because this shot is double-aught buck,” Smoke said, holding out his hand. There were three large shotgun pellets in his palm. “And if you look close enough, you can see that they are bloodstained.”

  “So one of them is wounded?” Pearlie asked.

  Smoke shook his head. “I doubt that. Whoever caught a bellyful of these pellets is more’n likely dead.”

  “I hope so.”

  “There’s something else about these pellets,” Smoke said. He held something up. “This thread was sticking to one of them. It’s red and black.”

  “Red and black thread. Came from a shirt maybe?” Tom asked.

  “That would be my guess. But the question is, what would an Indian on a raiding party be doing wearing a white man’s shirt?”

  “That doesn’t seem all that unusual to me, Smoke,” Pearlie said. “Since they’ve all started getting paid for allowing grazing on their land, most of the Indians have more money than most of the cowboys I know. They buy all sorts of white men’s things.”

  “That’s true,” Smoke agreed. “But let’s think about it for a moment. These Indians were out on a war party, right? Now, it’s been a long time since any of our Indians around here were hostile. They’ve got no reason to be. It’s like you say, most of them are making more money than most of the cowboys as it is. So the only reason I can think of that Indians might be on the warpath would be for some holy reason known only to them. If they’re goin’ to war for some holy reason, then they would want it to be in the old way. That means they would paint their face, wear feathers and traditional warrior getup. And to tell the truth, I have a hard time picturing a warrior in a red and black plaid shirt.”

  “Maybe they aren’t out to make medicine,” Tom said. “Maybe they’re just out to steal what they can.”

  “Are you missing anything, Tom? Anything that the Indians might want?”

  Tom shook his head. “The only thing that was taken was that gold chain and diamond I had given to Jo Ellen. You remember it, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course I do.”

  “That was gone, but nothing else was missing. Not any of the horses. Not even the shotgun. Come to think of it, none of the guns were taken from my hired hands either.”