Quest of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  When Sally saw the indecision on his face, she smiled gently. “I’ll be all right, dear. After all, I’ve made the trip many times before.”

  Finally Smoke nodded, though it was clear he wasn’t happy with the idea of her traveling alone. “All right, if you say so.”

  * * *

  Sally prepared a large lunch of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and several loaves of fresh bread. She had a lot of hungry cowboys to feed before she could start her packing, and she cooked extra portions at lunch so she wouldn’t have to cook later for supper.

  Even though Smoke was among the richest ranchers in the area and they could easily afford a full-time cook, Sally enjoyed cooking for the men. She’d been a teacher in the local school, and she wouldn’t have known what to do with her time if she couldn’t make herself useful in this way. At times, even though Smoke hired a cook for trail drives, Sally would ride along and help him prepare the meals from the chuck wagon. When Smoke asked her why, she said it helped keep her cooking skills sharp—and the men all agreed she was right, for she was widely known as the best cook in the county.

  After lunch, she went into the bedroom to get her things together, while Smoke went out to the corral to help with the branding.

  Some six hours later, Smoke entered the cabin and found their wooden bathtub set up in the spare bedroom, and it was full of steaming hot water.

  “What’s this?” he said with a grin. “I’m a mountain man—you know it’s not time for my annual bath yet.”

  Sally appeared from their bedroom, wearing a frilly pink nightgown, a half smile on her face. “Smoke Jensen, I’m leaving in the morning and I won’t see you for I don’t know how long. If you think I’m going to spend my last night with you with you all covered with dirt and sweat, well, then, you’ve got another think coming!”

  Smoke laughed and began to quickly shed his buckskins. “Well, dear, when you put it that way . . .”

  2

  Two weeks later, on the day Sally was supposed to wire him and let him know what was going on with her father, Smoke called Cal and Pearlie to the cabin just after breakfast. They’d been riding fence all week, fixing up the areas where the winter storms had torn them down. The branding and separating of the calves from their mothers had been done, and there was nothing much else to do around the ranch. They were all just about bored to death.

  When they entered the cabin, Smoke looked up from his coffee. “I’ve got to go into Big Rock this morning to pick up Sally’s telegraph, and I thought you boys might like to go along.”

  “Boy, Smoke,” Pearlie said with feeling, “you got that right! I’m so tired of Buttermilk’s cookin’, I’m ’bout ready to go on a diet.”

  Buttermilk Wheeler was a local cook that Sally had insisted Smoke hire to cook for them while she was away. “Otherwise,” she’d said with a twinkle in her eyes, “I’ll come back to find you all dead of food poisoning.”

  Cal laughed at Pearlie’s claim. “That’ll be the day when you pass up food of any kind, Pearlie.”

  “Well, it’s true,” Pearlie argued, looking at Smoke with a pained expression on his face. “Now I know why they call his biscuits ‘sinkers,’ and the coffee . . . well, let’s just say it tastes like ol’ Buttermilk flavors it with axle grease.”

  Buttermilk, who was standing over at the stove kneading biscuit dough, turned his head, looking hurt. “I’ll remember that, friend, next time you hold out your cup for your third helping.”

  Pearlie ignored him. “You think we could have lunch over at Longmont’s, Smoke? I got me a real hankerin’ for some of that there French cuisine,” he said, pronouncing it queeseen.

  Smoke laughed. He knew a day in town with the boys was just the thing to get him over his boredom. “I don’t see why not.”

  “Maybe we can get Andre to fix up some of those frog legs in butter sauce he’s always trying to get Pearlie to taste,” Cal teased, knowing Pearlie got sick at the very thought of eating any part of a slimy frog.

  “And maybe he can wash it down with some coffee that ain’t flavored with axle grease!” Buttermilk added from the other side of the room.

  Pearlie held up his hands, his nose wrinkled. “Thank you, but I think I’ll just stick with a steak about two inches thick, some of those fried taters, and maybe some of that peach cobbler Andre makes so good.”

  “It’s a mite early for the peach cobbler, Pearlie, but I think we can manage the rest of it,” Smoke said, standing up and getting his hat.

  “I don’t know, Smoke,” Pearlie said, walking out of the door behind him. “You know, Andre has that greenhouse of his and he’s just about always got some fresh vegetables, even in the dead of winter.”

  “Peaches ain’t no vegetable, you idiot,” Cal said. “They’re fruit.”

  “Oh, so now you’re a gardenin’ expert along with everthing else you think you know, huh?” Pearlie said, swinging at Cal’s butt with his boot but missing.

  “If you’d ever try and read some of those books Miss Sally gave me, you’d know a little something too,” Cal said, a superior air about him.

  Smoke stopped walking and turned as if to go back in the cabin.

  “What’d you forget, Smoke?” Pearlie asked.

  “Some cotton. If you boys are gonna go on like this all the way to town, I’m gonna stuff my ears full so I don’t have to listen to it.”

  * * *

  Once they got to town, Smoke sent the boys on ahead to Longmont’s Saloon while he stopped off at the telegraph office. He picked up a long telegraph that had just arrived from Boston and took it outside to read.

  Sally wrote that her father had indeed had a heart stroke and, though he’d survived it, he was extremely weak and the doctors didn’t know how long it was going to take for him to recover. Sally said she thought she’d better plan on staying for an extended visit to help her mother cope with her father’s illness.

  Smoke grimaced, and carefully folded the telegram, stuck it in the pocket of his buckskin jacket, and headed for Longmont’s. It was bad enough to be sitting around on his duff bored to death, but to do it without the steadying influence of Sally was going to be almost intolerable. And to make matters worse, he was having trouble sleeping without Sally’s warm body next to him in their bed.

  He chuckled to himself. It was funny, but when he was camped out on a trail drive or on a hunting or fishing trip to the High Lonesome, he slept like a baby even on the hardest ground. Guess he was getting spoiled, and he missed the feeling of being spoiled by Sally.

  He stepped through the batwings of the saloon, and out of long habit learned from years of watching his back, stepped to the side with his back to the wall until his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room.

  Longmont’s was a combination restaurant, bar, and poker parlor, with tables for eating situated off to the left, a long mahogany bar against the far wall on the right, and a few felt-covered tables in front of it for the poker players to sit at while they drank and gambled. Louis Longmont, the owner, had no fancy-dressed women or piano players or faro tables, and offered only the simple pleasures of excellent food prepared by his French chef and longtime friend, Andre, honest liquor, and an honest game of straight poker in a dignified, quiet atmosphere.

  Smoke saw Louis himself seated at a table off to the left with Cal and Pearlie, his usual spot until the nighttime poker games heated up. He and Smoke had been close friends for longer than Smoke liked to remember.

  Louis was a lean, hawk-faced man, with strong, slender hands and long fingers, the nails carefully manicured, the hands clean. He had jet-black hair, turning slightly gray over the ears, and a pencil-thin mustache. He was dressed as always in a black suit, with white shirt and dark ascot—the ascot something he’d picked up on a trip to England a few years back. He wore low-heeled boots, and had a pistol on his right hip in tied-down leather; it was not just for show, for Louis was snake-quick with a short gun and was a feared, deadly gunhand when pushed. He was just past fort
y years old, had come to the West as a young boy, and had made a fortune due to his sharp intellect and fearless nature.

  When he saw Smoke enter the door, Louis waved him over and poured another cup of coffee out of the silver pot on the table. Smoke took a seat and looked at the coffee. “I may need something stronger than that, Louis.”

  Louis’s eyes grew concerned. “Bad news from Sally, Smoke?”

  “Yes and no. Her father is doing all right, but he had a heart stroke and the doctors say there’s no telling how long he might be laid up. The bad news is that Sally plans on staying up there with him until he’s better, and that could be months according to her telegram.”

  Pearlie’s face fell at the news. “You mean we’re gonna have to keep on eatin’ Buttermilk’s food for months?”

  Cal nodded in sympathy with Pearlie. “I’m sure gonna miss Miss Sally’s cooking,” he said morosely.

  “Yeah,” Smoke agreed. “The place just won’t be the same without her around, that’s for sure.” Though his mind was more on the coldness in their feather bed than on the quality of her cooking.

  Louis’s eyes narrowed. “You say Sally is going to be gone for some months, and you are finished with most of the immediate work that needs to be done on the Sugarloaf?”

  Smoke nodded. “That’s just about it, Louis, and I’m going to get real tired of sitting around watching the grass grow.”

  “Have you thought about the possibility of taking a trip, maybe going off somewhere on an adventure?” Louis asked, a speculative glint in his eyes.

  “Why, what do you mean?” Smoke asked. “What kind of adventure are you talking about?”

  “Let’s order lunch first, and then there is someone I want you to meet,” Louis said, a secretive smile on his face as he held his cards close to his vest.

  “I thought you’d never offer,” Pearlie said. “My mouth’s been waterin’ ever since we came in here and I smelled Andre’s cooking.”

  * * *

  While they were eating, Louis went over to the young black boy who served as his waiter, handed him a note, and then returned to the table.

  “What was that all about?” Smoke asked around a mouthful of steak, cooked just the way he liked it, red and bloody inside and charred on the outside.

  “I sent Lincoln over to the hotel with a note for a man I want you to meet,” Louis answered.

  “Oh?”

  “His name is William Cornelius Van Horne,” Louis said. “He was one of the builders of the Illinois Central Railroad, and he’s out here to do a little antelope hunting before heading on up into Canada to build another railroad.”

  “And he’s here to hunt antelope?” Smoke asked. “Why? You can’t eat the damned things. They taste like leather.”

  Louis shrugged. “He says he wants a head to put on his wall, seems it’s about the only big-game trophy he doesn’t already have.”

  Smoke put his fork down, a look on his face like his steak had suddenly gone bad. “Louis, you know how I feel about that. I don’t believe in killing anything you’re not going to eat. I hope you don’t think I’m gonna take this idiot out hunting for a trophy to put on his wall.”

  Louis held up his hand and shook his head. “No, Smoke, it’s nothing like that, but I think you’ll like this man. And what with Sally going to be gone for so long, I think you might want to hear what he has to say.”

  * * *

  The lunch dishes had been cleared away, and Smoke and Louis and the boys were on their third cup of coffee, when the batwings swung open and the sunlight from outside was blocked by a massive figure.

  The man who entered was of average height and had the approximate size and shape of a whiskey barrel, with broad shoulders, a thick paunch, and hands as large as hams that looked tough enough to drive railway spikes with. He looked to Smoke to be in his mid-to-late thirties, and had a full but neatly trimmed beard and mustache.

  He was dressed in a suit and vest, and when he waved and walked over toward Louis’s table, he had that graceful, light-footed gait common to many big men.

  When he got to the table and spoke, his voice was deep and gravelly—a whiskey-and-cigar type of voice, Smoke thought. As he appraised the man, he was impressed. The man had an air of authority about him, and of strength. He was used to leading men and to having his orders carried out without hesitation or question, Smoke surmised, and he didn’t appear to be the kind of man who has to prove his manhood by killing animals and hanging them on a wall.

  “Good afternoon, Louis,” the man said, inclining his head, but his eyes were on Smoke. Evidently he too was appraising Smoke even as he was being appraised.

  “Hello, Bill,” Louis said, getting to his feet. “Mr. William Cornelius Van Horne, I’d like you to meet Smoke Jensen,” Louis continued. “He’s the man I was telling you about yesterday.”

  “Ah,” Van Horne said, “the famous mountain man.” He stuck out his hand to Smoke.

  When Smoke stood up and took the hand, he was surprised to find it hard and rough, with calluses on it. This was not a man who rode a desk all day, he thought, smiling as Van Horne squeezed his hand hard enough to make a lesser man wince.

  “Hello, Mr. Van Horne,” Smoke said. “I don’t know about the ‘famous’ part, but I was a mountain man for a while in my younger days.”

  “Call me Bill, Smoke. I’m not much one for formalities.”

  “This is Cal and Pearlie,” Smoke said, “my friends.”

  “Howdy, Cal, Pearlie,” Bill said, smiling and nodding as he took a seat on the other side of Louis.

  “Would you care for some lunch?” Louis asked the newcomer.

  Bill smiled. “I will never pass up a chance to partake of Andre’s excellent cooking, Louis. A steak and some of those wonderful fried potatoes would go nicely, I think.”

  While Louis gave the order, Bill spoke to Smoke. “Has Louis told you why I was asking about you?”

  Smoke glanced at Louis and shook his head. “No, but he did say something about you wanting to hunt antelope.”

  “Pshaw,” Bill said, waving a dismissive hand. “That was just something to pass the time while I waited to get in touch with you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. I’ve heard about you and your . . . rather special relationship with those men who live up in the Rockies who call themselves mountain men.”

  Smoke smiled. “I’ve ridden with a few of them over the years, though their numbers aren’t what they used to be, what with the coming of civilization to the mountains.”

  “Smoke, I have been commissioned to undertake a great task. The government of Canada has asked me to build a railroad from Winnipeg all the way to the western coast, near Vancouver Island.”

  Smoke pursed his lips, visualizing what he knew about Canada. “That’s some pretty rough country, Bill. You’ll be crossing at least three mountain ranges that I can think of, not to mention forests so thick you can barely ride a horse through them, and that’s not even taking into account the various Indian tribes who won’t take kindly to your trespassing on their lands.”

  Bill laughed, a great booming sound that came from his gut. ‘You do have away of putting it into perspective, Smoke. Yes, you’re right, but the Canadian government didn’t say it was going to be easy.”

  “Easy is the last word I would use, Bill. Danged near impossible is probably more accurate.”

  Bill’s brow knitted. “You don’t think it can be done?”

  Smoke shrugged. “I don’t know. For one thing, I don’t know a whole heck of a lot about what it takes to build a railroad, and I don’t even know if there are any passes over the mountains you’ll have to traverse. I’ve never been that far north.”

  “You’re right about the mountain passes, and I don’t know either. There have been several expeditions through the area, but the men on them haven’t finished their journeys yet, so there is no word on where the passes might be, if there are any.”

  He leaned back in his chai
r so the waiter could place his plate of food in front of him on the table.

  As he cut up his steak, he added, “That’s why I needed someone who might be able to persuade some of these mountain men down here in Colorado Territory to come up there and act as advance scouts for my expedition.”

  He took a bite of steak and rolled his eyes. “This is delicious, as always, Louis. Are you sure I can’t hire Andre away from you?”

  Louis grinned and shrugged. “Andre is a free man, Bill, so you can try.”

  Bill shook his head. “No, that would be worse than trying to steal another man’s wife, but tell him if he ever has a hankering to travel up north to give me a shout.”

  He took another bite and said, “The pay would be excellent, Smoke, probably more money than any of your friends could earn in ten years of trapping.”

  “Money is not important to mountain men, Bill,” Smoke said, a half smile on his face. “Their lives center around being on their own and away from civilization, not on earning a living.”

  “Well, what better challenge than going where few have gone before,” Bill said, pointing his fork at Smoke as he spoke. “I hear there are fewer than twenty-five hundred white men in an area of several hundred thousand square miles in Canada. You can’t get much further from civilization than that.”

  Smoke thought about it for a few minutes while he got a cigar going and drank some more coffee. He knew several of his old friends up in the High Lonesome who thought Colorado was getting too crowded and who might be willing to try a new place, just for the adventure of it.

  “I might know some men who might be willing to take you up on such an offer, now that you mention it,” Smoke said.

  Bill smiled and finished off his steak. He pushed the plate to the side, took a leather case out of his breast pocket, and extracted a long, thick cigar. He struck a lucifer on his pants leg and puffed the cigar alive. He eyed Smoke through billowing clouds of blue smoke. “Louis tells me you have a wife and a ranch to run and that you would likely be unavailable to leave the country for an extended period of time.”