Quest of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Suddenly, he sat up straighter and reached for the new Winchester he had between his legs when he saw a shadow moving over near the horse string. “What the . . .” he began to say when he felt a sharp sting followed by the sensation of someone dragging ice across his throat.

  He had time to turn his head and see a hulking figure behind him before the blood from his severed throat gushed into his mouth and choked him. His eyes opened wide as the Winchester fell from his hands and he toppled over onto his face in the snow at his feet.

  “Adios, pond scum,” Louis whispered to the dead man before he moved silently off looking for another sentry. Louis fought the nausea the killing had caused in his stomach. He was used to standing face-to-face with men he was up against, and the thought of sneaking up on a man and killing him from behind went against his grain. Of course, these dirty bastards deserved no mercy, he told himself, and he steeled his conscience for the next man he was going to kill.

  Cal and Pearlie, watching from behind some nearby bushes, moved to the rope holding the horses when they saw the guard fall. A quick flick of Cal’s knife at one end and of Pearlie’s at the other, and the rope parted. Being careful riot to spook the animals into whinnying, Pearlie and Cal took the ends of the rope and slowly led the horses away from the camp and deeper into the forest.

  On the other side of the camp, Roy Woodson was walking in small circles and flapping his arms against his chest trying to keep warm as he kept watch over the packs and supplies that’d been stacked there earlier. He’d left his rifle sitting on the ground leaning up against one of the packs so he could put his hands in the pockets of his coat to keep them warm.

  He turned rapidly, his heart beating fast as he heard a small splash from the edge of the nearby lake. He peered into the gloom at the ghostly whiteness of the ice and snow, wishing like hell the moon were out so he could see what had made the sound.

  He whirled back around at the sound of a soft voice behind him. “Hey, did you forget this?” Smoke asked, holding the forgotten Winchester in his hands as he walked toward Roy.

  Roy opened his mouth to shout for help, and Smoke swung the rifle as hard as he could. The front sight on the barrel tore through Roy’s cheek, knocked three of his teeth out, and snapped his jaw to the side, dislocating it. Roy fell as if he’d been poleaxed, unconscious before he hit the ground.

  Smoke crouched and waited to see if anyone had heard the sound of the sentry hitting the ground. When there was no response, he straightened up and moved over to the stack of supplies. He took two sticks of dynamite out of his coat pocket and placed them under the stack of packs and boxes and supplies the man had been guarding.

  Striking a lucifer on his pants leg, he lit the two-minute fuse. As he moved toward the campfire in the niiddle of camp, he gave a low whistle that sounded remarkably like the call of a night hawk, the signal to the others they had two minutes to get clear of the explosion.

  As he walked quickly by the embers of the campfire, he reached out and dumped the contents of a cardboard box into the coals, along with a burlap sack full of pinecones, and kept moving, making no sound at all. It was as if he were walking on cotton, he was so silent.

  A sleepy voice from a pile of blankets near the fire mumbled, “Roy, is that you?”

  Smoke grunted what might have been an answer, but he didn’t slow down until he was fifty yards from the camp.

  A low whistle from off to the side alerted him to the position Louis and Cal and Pearlie had staked out while waiting for him.

  He moved to join them, and Cal handed him his Henry repeating rifle. The four men settled down behind the trunk of a large pine tree that had been felled by lightning, and aimed their rifles across its bark.

  “Remember, fire only until your rifles are empty, and then hightail it out of here towards the horses,” Smoke said, never taking his eyes off the campfire that was now burning brightly from the pinecones.

  Twenty seconds later, the dynamite among the supplies exploded with a tremendous roar, shredding the outlaws’ supplies and gear and extra ammunition and blowing it into the night sky in a huge fireball.

  Shouts and screams of fear and pain rang out as men were literally blown out of their sleeping bags by the force of the explosion.

  Dark figures could be seen outlined in the firelight as they scrambled for their boots and weapons, shouting at each other, trying to figure out what had happened.

  Suddenly, the boxful of ten gauge OO-buckshot shells Smoke had put into the fire began to explode, sending molten balls of lead in every direction, rending flesh and bone like a buzz saw as they ripped into the outlaws.

  “Now,” Smoke said quietly, and the four of them began to fire into the crowded camp as fast as they could pull their triggers and jack new shells into their firing chambers.

  More screams of pain rang out as the outlaws dropped like flies from the onslaught of .44-caliber rifle bullets spraying into their midst. Dark figures could be seen crawling and scrambling on hands and knees trying to find cover from the withering rifle fire.

  As Cal fired his last bullet, Pearlie grabbed him by the collar and jerked him to his feet. “Come on, Cal boy, ’less you want to be left behind!” he urged.

  The four men jogged to their horses tied a dozen yards away, and swung up into their saddles just as answering fire from the camp began to whine over their heads and slap into nearby trees.

  “Shag your mounts, boys,” Smoke said as he leaned over his saddle horn and put the spurs to his horse. “It’s about to get real exciting around here before too long!”

  As they rode off into the night, they took the time to scatter the outlaws’ horses ahead of them. Few if any of the animals would be able to be tracked down by the men they’d attacked.

  Once they were out of rifle range, Smoke slowed his horse and stopped long enough to take out a handful of cigars and pass them around to the others. As they all lit up, he said simply, “A good night’s work, men.”

  Louis nodded. “There’s at least of few of those treacherous bastards who won’t be killing any more men again,” he said.

  “Amen to that, Louis,” Smoke replied, drawing the smoke from his cigar into his lungs.

  Cal coughed a couple of times getting his cigar lit, and then he looked back toward the outlaws’ camp. “That’ll teach you sorry sons of bitches,” he muttered, remembering the dead men at the train wreck.

  18

  When he heard the sound of their attackers’ horses riding off into the darkness, Hammer came out from behind the tree he’d hidden behind and surveyed the damage to their camp. Blood was running down his face from a wound on his forehead where a slug from a shotgun shell had creased his skin, and he had a hole in his trouser leg where a piece of wood from the dynamite explosion had torn through it, barely missing his thigh.

  Four men lay dead near the campfire where the exploding shotgun shells had torn them apart. Two more had died in the explosion of the dynamite that had destroyed all of their supplies and extra ammunition, and Bull walked up telling him the two sentries were also dead.

  “Eight men dead,” Hammer said, talking to himself as he took stock. “That leaves us with twenty-one, twenty-two counting me.”

  “An’ some of them are wounded,” Bull said, glancing around the ruined camp, “though none so bad they can’t ride.”

  One of his men, named Little Joe Calhoun, got up off the ground and dusted snow off his britches. “You think they’ll be coming back soon, Boss?” he asked. His face was scorched black and he was limping from a flesh wound in his right leg, blood slowly oozing onto his boot.

  Hammer thought about it for a few moments, then shook his head. “Not tonight, Little Joe. There must not be too many of them in the party or they would’ve finished what they started.” He glanced around at his men, who were slowly coming out of hiding, some nursing superficial wounds, others miraculously untouched. “This has more the feel of a lightning raid to me.” He clamped his jaws shut tight
when he realized his voice was shaking from the fear and terror he’d felt during the onslaught earlier.

  Shorty Wallace came running into the camp. “They’ve scattered the hosses, Boss. It’ll take hours to try and round ’em up.”

  Hammer sniffed at the acrid smell coming from Shorty, and realized the man had shit his pants. He turned away to get away from the smell and considered his options, which weren’t very many as he figured it.

  “No, we’re not gonna try for the horses, men.”

  “But what’re we gonna do then, Boss?” Bull asked. “Just sit around here and wait for them to hit us again?”

  “No,” Hammer replied, looking off to the south. “We’re gonna start walking as fast as we can toward the border.”

  “Walking?” Spotted Dog asked. “But Hammer,” he argued, “the snow’s almost two feet deep.”

  “That’s all right,” Hammer replied. “I figure it’s less than ten miles to the border and only another five to Noyes. We’ve got at least another three or four hours until daylight, and on foot we won’t leave much of a trail if we’re careful. We should be across the border just after sunup if we make tracks now and don’t hang around here jawin’ about it all night.”

  “What good’s being across the border gonna do, Boss?” Bull asked,

  “If the men who’re after us are Canadian lawmen, they won’t be able to cross the border to come after us, at least not legally, an’ if we can get to Noyes, the sheriff there will swear we were there during the time of the train robbery, so we’ll be safe.”

  “I don’t relish walkin’ no ten miles in these boots,” Juan Sanchez said.

  Hammer shrugged as he bent to pick up a Winchester rifle he’d stolen from one of the dead Pinkerton men. “Then sit here on your ass, Juan, and you can give our regards to those bastards when they come back here to finish the job they started.”

  Juan gave a lopsided grin. “Well, when you put it that way, I guess walking ain’t so bad after all.”

  “Leave everything behind except your weapons and let’s make tracks,” Hammer said.

  Bull gave a sarcastic laugh. “Hell, there ain’t nothin’ left ’ceptin’ our saddles, an’ we sure as hell don’t need those.” He rubbed his hands together and added, “One good thing, walking ten miles in this weather is gonna keep us warm at any rate.”

  “Now, follow me, men,” Hammer said, glancing at the sky, from which snow continued to fall. “And walk in single file so the snow will cover our tracks. That should give us a few more hours while the men who attacked us try and figure out which way we went.”

  His men picked up their weapons and strung out in a line behind Hammer as he began walking rapidly to the south, cursing under his breath the bastards that’d killed his men and messed up his plans for a leisurely ride to Noyes.

  As he walked, he silently gave thanks that he’d kept the bag full of money in his blankets with him instead of packing it with the other supplies, or it’d be ashes by now.

  * * *

  Back at their camp, Smoke and his men sat near the fire, warming up after their raid. Cal had made more coffee, and they were drinking it and eating the last of the food they’d fixed the night before. Louis passed around a small bottle of brandy he had in his saddlebags.

  “Here you go, boys, add a little of this to the coffee. It’ll warm your insides a bit.”

  “What are we gonna do now, Smoke?” Pearlie asked as he poured a tablespoon of brandy into his coffee. “Go back and hit ’em again?”

  “No,” Smoke said, a thoughtful look in his eyes as he recalled the number of Winchesters he’d seen stacked around the fire when he ran through the enemies’ camp. “They’re pretty well armed, and even counting the men we killed, they’ve still got us outnumbered over five to one.”

  “Yes, and without any food or supplies left, they are going to be getting awfully hungry before too long, especially in this cold weather,” Louis said.

  “We scattered their mounts pretty good,” Cal said, “so they won’t be going nowhere until they can manage to gather ’em back up.”

  Smoke grinned. “Which we don’t intend to let them do, Cal. We’ll keep them on foot and let them get good and hungry before we go after them again. By tomorrow afternoon, I think they’ll be softened up enough for us to take another shot at them.”

  He dumped his coffee out into the fire. “I don’t think they’ll venture out into the darkness for the rest of the night, not knowing how close we are, so let’s get a few hours sleep so we’ll be fresh and ready for them tomorrow morning.”

  * * *

  Smoke woke up just after sunup, and stoked the coals from the campfire into a fire large enough to cook them some breakfast. The storm had abated, and there were only isolated snowflakes falling gently on a soft breeze.

  As they filled up on fatback and beans and biscuits made fresh by Pearlie, they discussed their plan of attack against the outlaws.

  “First, we’ll find out what the bastards are up to,” Smoke said as he chewed the crunchy bacon he’d put between two halves of a biscuit. “I suspect they’ll be scattered out trying to run down their horses. If that’s the case, we should be able to take out a few more of them from a distance without too much trouble.”

  “What if they’re still bunched up in their camp?” Cal asked.

  “Then we’ll surround them and use our long guns to pick them off one at a time until they decide to surrender,” Louis said.

  “That’s right, Louis,” Smoke agreed. “We should be all right if they try to mount a counterattack since we’ll have our horses and they’ll still be on foot. But one way or another, they’re going to be in our custody by this afternoon, or they’re going to be dead.”

  * * *

  When they were finished with breakfast, Cal and Pearlie struck the camp while Smoke and Louis got extra ammunition off the packhorses and made sure all of the rifles and pistols were fully loaded.

  Once they were ready, Smoke took the lead and they moved out toward the outlaws’ camp, keeping a close watch to make sure they didn’t come up on any of them unexpectedly.

  As they breasted the rise where they’d observed the enemy camp the night before, Smoke and Louis took out their binoculars and took a long look at the deserted camp below.

  “That’s strange,” Louis said as he swept the area with his binoculars. “I don’t see any sign of life in the camp.”

  “You’re right, Louis,” Smoke said. “I see several bodies lying where they fell, but there’s no sign of other men in the area.”

  Pearlie shook his head, a disgusted look on his face. “They didn’t even bother to bury their dead,” he said angrily.

  “I guess they figure coyotes and wolves need to eat same as worms,” Louis said dryly.

  “You think they might be out lookin’ for their mounts?” Cal asked.

  Smoke shook his head. “No, I don’t think so, Cal. We would’ve seen them on our way here if that were the case, since we scattered the horses toward our camp.”

  “Maybe they’re hiding in the woods nearby,” Pearlie offered. “Just waiting for us to show ourselves so they can ambush us.”

  Smoke nodded. “That’s possible.” He sat up in his saddle and looked all around the camp through his glasses, but could see no sign of the outlaws.

  “I guess we’ll have to split up and check out the area on all sides of the camp, but I want you to go slow and be very careful. If you see any sign of them, fire off a shot and the rest of us will come running,” Smoke said.

  The four men each took off in separate directions, walking their horses slowly with their guns in their hands, ready in case of an ambush.

  Two hours later, they met up at the outlaws’ camp, having seen no sign of the outlaws.

  Smoke got down off his horse and walked slowly around the perimeter of the camp, bending over and staring at the ground as he walked.

  After awhile, he straightened up and looked off to the south. “Look here,
” he said, squatting and pointing at the fresh layer of snow.

  “I don’t see anything,” Louis said as he peered over Smoke’s shoulder.

  “This snow is an inch or so shallower than the surrounding snow is,” Smoke said. He stood back up. “And the depression seems to run toward the south.”

  “What’s that mean, Smoke?” Pearlie asked, staring in the same direction as Smoke.

  “I think the outlaws took off walking to the south, and they walked in single file hoping the snow would cover their tracks,” he answered. “But the depression their feet caused in the snow caused the new snow to be several inches shallower than the surrounding snowfall.”

  “How long ago?” Louis asked.

  “From the depth of the snow, I’d say they’ve got five or six hours on us at least,” Smoke said.

  “Why would they head south?” Cal asked. “There ain’t nothing that way for miles and miles.”

  Smoke glanced at him, his eyes thoughtful. “Nothing except the Canadian border,” he said.

  “Well, they can’t have gone far on foot,” Pearlie said, grinning.

  Louis shook his head as he made a mental calculation. “The average man can walk at two to four miles an hour, Pearlie. That means if they’ve been going steady for five or six hours, they could have made ten to fifteen miles . . . farther if they’re hurrying.”

  “It’d be hard to keep up that pace in this weather and with no food or warm drinks,” Smoke said. “But you’re right, Louis, they could be pretty close to the border by now.”

  “What difference does that make to us?” Cal asked.

  Smoke grinned. “None, Cal. They’re probably figuring we’re Canadian authorities and won’t be able to cross the border after them, and that’s where they’ve made a big mistake, one that’s going to cost them either their freedom or their lives, depending on how stupid they are.”

  He turned toward his horse. “Now, let’s mount up and see just how far they’ve gotten.”