The Last Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Smoke had dismounted just inside the box canyon, ground reining Seven. Smoke removed his boots and slipped on moccasins. Then he went on the prowl, as silent as death. He held a skinning knife in his left hand.

  * * *

  “No shots,” Austin said. “And it’s been three hours.”

  Sam sat quietly. Everything about this job had turned sour.

  “Horse comin’,” Felter said.

  “There he is!” Austin said. “And it’s Canning. By God, he said he’d get him, and he did.”

  But Felter wasn’t sure about that. He’d smelled wood smoke about an hour back. That didn’t fit any pattern. And Canning wasn’t sitting his horse right. Then the screaming drifted to them. Canning was hollering in agony.

  “What’s he hollerin’ for?” Kid asked. “I hurt a lot more’un anything he could have wrong with him.”

  “Don’t bet on that,” Felter told him. He scrambled down the gravel-and-brush-covered slope to halt Canning’s frightened horse.

  Felter recoiled in horror at the sight of Canning’s blood-soaked crotch.

  “My privates!” Canning squalled. “Smoke waylaid me and gelded me! He cauterized me with a runnin’ iron.” Canning passed out, tumbling from the saddle.

  Felter and Sam dragged the man into the brush and looked at the awful wound. Smoke had heated a running iron and seared the wound, stopping most of the bleeding. Felter thought Canning would live, but his raping days were over.

  And Felter knew, with a sudden realization, that he wanted no more of the man called Smoke. Not without about twenty men backing him up, that is.

  Using a spare shirt from his saddlebags, Felter made a crude bandage for Canning. But it was going to be hell on the man sitting a saddle. He looked around him. That fool Kid Austin was walking down the floor of the canyon, his hands poised over his twin Colts. An empty laudanum bottle lay on the ground.

  “Get back here, you fool!” Felter shouted.

  Austin ignored him. “Come on, Smoke!” he yelled. “I’m goin’ to kill you.”

  “Hell with you, Kid,” Sam muttered.

  They tied Canning in the saddle and rode off, up the slope of the canyon wall, high up, near the crest. There they found a hole that just might get them free. Raking their horses’ sides, the animals fought for footing, digging and sliding in the loose rock. The horses realized they had to make it—or die. With one final lunge, the horses cleared the crest and stood on firm ground, trembling from fear and exhaustion.

  As they rested the animals, they looked for the Kid. Austin was lost from sight.

  They rode off to the north, toward a mining camp where Richards had said he would leave word, or send more men should this crew fail.

  Well, Felter reflected bitterly, we damn sure failed.

  Austin, his horse forgotten, his mind numbed by overdoses of laudanum, stumbled down the rocky floor of the canyon, screaming and cursing Smoke. He pulled up short when he spotted his quarry.

  Smoke sat calmly on a huge rock, munching on a cold biscuit.

  “Get up!” the Kid shouted. “Get on your feet and face me like a man oughta.”

  Smoke finished his meager meal, then rose to his feet. He was smiling.

  Kid Austin walked on, narrowing the distance, finally stopping about thirty feet from Smoke. “I’ll be known as the man who killed Smoke,” he said. “Me! Kid Austin.”

  Smoke laughed at him.

  The Kid flushed. “I done it to your wife, too, Jensen. She liked it so much she asked me to do it to ’er some more. So I obliged ’er. I took your woman, now I’m gonna take you.” He dipped his right hand downward.

  Smoke drew his right hand .44 with blinding speed, drawing, cocking, firing, before Austin could realize what was taking place in front of his eyes. The would-be gunfighter felt two lead fists of pain strike him in the belly, one below his belt buckle, the other just above the ornate silver buckle. The hammerlike blows dropped him to his knees. Hurt began creeping into his groin and stomach. He tried to pull his guns from leather, but his hands would not respond to the commands from his brain.

  “I’m Kid Austin,” he managed to say. “You can’t do this to me.”

  “Looks like I did, though,” Smoke said. He turned away from the dying man and walked back to Seven, swinging into the saddle. He rode off without looking back.

  “Momma!” the Kid called, as the pain in his belly grew more intense. “It hurts, Momma. Help me.”

  But only the animals and the canyon heard his cries for help. They alone witnessed his begging. The clop of Seven’s hooves grew fainter.

  His intestines mangled, one kidney shattered, and his spleen ruptured, the Kid died on his knees in the rocky canyon, in a vague praying position. He remained that way for a long time, until his horse picked up its master’s scent and found him, nudging him with its nose, toppling the Kid over on his side. The horse bolted from the blood smell, running down the canyon. One Colt fell from a holster, clattering on the rocks, to shine in the thin sunlight filtering through the timber of the narrow canyon.

  Then the canyon was quiet, with only the sighing of the wind.

  * * *

  Smoke rode back to the cabin in the valley and packed his belongings, covering the pack frame with a ground sheet. He rubbed Seven down and fed him grain and hay, stabling him in the lean-to.

  He cleaned his guns and made camp outside the cabin. He could not bear to sleep inside that house of death and torture and rape. His sleep was restless during those starry nights of the first week back in the valley; his sleep troubled by nightmares of Nicole calling out his name, of the baby’s dying.

  The second week was no better, his sleep interrupted by the same nightmares. So when he kicked out of his blankets on this final morning in the valley, his body covered with sweat, Smoke knew he would never rest well until the men who were responsible for this tragedy were dead—Potter, Stratton, Richards.

  Smoke bathed in the creek, doing so quickly, for the creek and the mossy bank also held memories. He saddled Seven and cinched the pack on a pack horse, then went to the graves by the cabin, hat in hand, to visit with his wife and son.

  “I don’t know that I will ever return,” he spoke quietly. “I wish it could have been different, Nicole. I wish we could have lived out our lives in peace, together, raising our family. I wish a lot of things, Nicole. Goodbye.”

  With tears in his eyes, he mounted Seven and rode away, pointing the nose of the big spotted horse north.

  But in a settlement on the banks of the Uncompahgre, Felter and Sam and Canning were telling a much different version of what happened in the cabin in the valley.

  15

  “I’m tellin’ you boys,” Felter said to the miners, “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it. Them murderin’ Utes raped the woman, killed her and the baby, then scalped ’em. It was terrible.”

  “Yeah,” Sam picked up the lie. “Then that outlaw, Smoke Jensen, he all of a sudden comes up on us—shootin’. He kilt Grissom and Poker and Evans right off. Just shot ’em dead for no reason. He went crazy, I guess. Stampeded our horses and Felter and me took cover in a waller. He took our horses.”

  “Time we worked our way out,” Felter said, “this Smoke had killed the rest of our crew and staked out Clark on an anthill, stripped him nekked and poured honey all over him.” He hung his head in sorrow. “Wasn’t nothin’ we could do for him. You boys know how hard a man dies like that.”

  The miners listened quietly.

  “I found Canning,” Felter said. “You all know what was done to him. Most awfullest thing I ever seen one white man do to another. Kid Austin was shot in the back; never even had a chance to pull his guns.”

  Some of the miners believed Felter; most did not. They knew about Smoke, the stories told, and knew about Felter and his scummy crew. Some of them had known Preacher, and knew the mountain man would not take a murderer to raise as his son. The general consensus was that Felter and Sam and Canning were lying.r />
  Felter had not told them of the men riding hard toward the camp; men sent by Richards and Stratton and Potter. That message was waiting for Felter when he arrived at the miners’ camp.

  Several miners left the smoke-filled tent, to gather in the dusky coolness.

  “Pass the word,” one said. “This boy Smoke is bein’ set up. We all know the story as to why.”

  “Yeah. The fight’ll be lopsided, but I sure don’t wanna miss it. I hear tell this Smoke is poison with a short gun.”

  “I heard it myself. See you.”

  * * *

  Although the trail of Felter was three weeks old, it was not that difficult to follow: a bloody bandage from Canning’s wounds; a carelessly doused campfire; an empty bottle of laudanum and several pints of whiskey. And Indians told him of sighting the men.

  It all pointed toward the silver camp near the Uncompahgre. And it also meant Felter was probably expecting more men to join him—probably more men than had attacked his cabin. How many brave men does it take to rape and kill one woman and a baby?

  That thought lay bitter on his mind as he rode, following the trail with dogged determination.

  Just south of what would soon be named Telluride, in the gray granite mountains, two miners stopped the young man on the spotted horse—stopped him warily.

  “I was told you’d be ridin’ a big spotted horse with a mean look in its eyes,” a miner said. “I ain’t tryin’ to be nosy, young feller, but if you’re the man called Smoke, I got news.”

  “I’m Smoke.” He took out tobacco and paper and rolled a cigarette, handing the makings to the miners.

  “Thanks,” one said, after they had all rolled, licked, and lit. “’Bout fourteen salty ol’ boys waitin’ for you at the silver camp. Most of us figure Felter lied ’bout what happened at your cabin. What did happen?”

  Smoke told them, leaving nothing out.

  “That’s ’bout the way we had it figured. Son, you can’t go up agin all them folks—no matter how you feel. That’d be foolish. They’s too many.”

  “If they’re gunhands for Potter or Richards or Stratton, I intend to kill them.”

  “’Pears to me, son, they ’bout wiped out your whole family.”

  “They made just one mistake,” Smoke said.

  “What’s that?”

  “They left me alive.”

  The miners had nothing to say to that.

  “Thanks for the information.” Smoke moved out.

  The miners watched him leave. One said, “I wouldn’t miss this for nothin’. This here is gonna be a fight that’ll be yakked about for a hundred years to come. You can tell your grandkids ’bout this. Providin’, that is, you can find a woman to live with your ugly face.”

  “Thank you. But you ain’t no rose. Come on.”

  * * *

  How the tall young man had managed to Injun up on him, the miner didn’t know. He was woods-wise and yet he hadn’t heard a twig snap or a leaf rustle. Just that sudden cold sensation of a rifle muzzle pressing against his neck.

  “My name is Smoke.”

  The miner almost ruined a perfectly good pair of long johns.

  “If you got friends in that camp,” Smoke told him, “you go down and very quietly tell them to ease out. ’Cause in one hour, I’m opening this dance.”

  “My name is Big Jake Johnson, Mr. Smoke—and I’m on your side.”

  Smoke removed the muzzle from the man’s neck.

  “Thank you,” the miner said.

  “Do it without alarming Felter and his crew.”

  “Consider it done. But Smoke, they’s fourteen hardcases in that camp. And they’re waitin’ for you.”

  “They won’t have long to wait.”

  * * *

  The mining camp, one long street, with tents and rough shacks on both sides of the dusty street, looked deserted as Smoke gazed down from his position on the side of a sloping canyon wall.

  The miners had left the camp, retreating to a spot on the northwest side of the canyon. They would have a grandstand view of the fight.

  Felter knew what was happening seconds after the miners began leaving, and began positioning his men around the shacky camp.

  The owners of the two saloons had wrestled kegs of beer and bottles of whiskey up the side of the hill, and were now doing a thriving business. A party atmosphere prevailed. This was better than a hanging—lasted longer, and would have a lot more action. But when the first shot was fired, the miners and the barkeeps would head for pre-picked out boulders and trees. Watching a good gunfight was one thing; getting shot was quite another.

  “Felter!” Smoke called, his voice rolling down the hillside. “You and Canning want to settle this between us? I’ll meet you both—stand-up, two to one. How about it?”

  In a shack, an outlaw known only as Lefty looked at Felter. “You ain’t never gonna take this one alive, Felter. No way.”

  Felter nodded. “I know it.” He was crouched behind a huge packing crate. No one in his right mind would trust the thin walls to protect him. A Henry .44 could punch through four inches of pine.

  “Give us the gold your Daddy stole!” Felter yelled. “Then you just ride on out of here.”

  “My Pa didn’t steal any gold. He just took what your bosses stole from the South—after they murdered my brother. And I don’t have it,” Smoke said truthfully.

  Smoke shifted positions, slipping about twenty-five yards to his right. He had seen a man dart from the camp, working his way up the side of the hill.

  Smoke watched the man pause and get set for a shot. He raised the Henry and put a slug in the man’s belly, slamming him backward. The man screamed, dropped his rifle, and tumbled down the embankment, rolling and clawing on his way down. He landed in a sprawl in the street, struggling to get to his feet. Smoke shot him in the chest and he fell forward. He did not move.

  The miners across the way cheered and hollered.

  “Thirteen to go,” Smoke muttered. He again shifted positions, grabbing up the dead man’s Henry, shucking the cartridges from it, putting them in his pocket.

  Smoke watched as men fanned out in the town, moving too quickly for him to get a shot. Just to keep them jumpy, Smoke put a round in back of one man’s boots. The man yelped and dived for the protection of a shack.

  “You boys ridin’ with Felter!” Smoke yelled. “You sure you want to stay with this dance? The music’s gonna get mighty fierce in a minute.”

  “You go to hell!” the voice came from a shack. A dozen other voices shouted curses at Smoke.

  Two men sprang from behind a building, rifles in their hands. They raced into a shack. Smoke put ten .44 rounds into the shack, working his Henry from left to right, waist high.

  One man screamed and stumbled out into the street, dropping his rifle. He died in the dirt, boot heels drumming out his death song. The second man staggered out, his chest and belly crimson. He sat down in the street, remained that way for a moment, then toppled over on his face.

  Smoke shifted positions once more, reloaded, and called out, “Any more of you boys want to dance to my music?”

  Canning looked at Felter, both of them crouched behind the packing crate. “Hell with the gold. I’ll settle for the eight thousand. Let’s rush him.”

  Felter was thoughtful for a moment. This whole plan was screwed up; nothing had worked right from the beginning. Smoke was pure devil—right out of hell. The cabin they had searched had been clean, but poor in worldly goods. Smoke didn’t have the gold. For all Felter knew, his Pa might have spent it on whiskey and whores.

  Felter knew only that he could not fail twice. He could never set foot in the Idaho Territory if he botched this job, and the way it looked, it was going to be another screw-up.

  “All right,” he said to Canning. “Can you ride?”

  “I’ll do anything just so’s I can take him alive; so’s I can use my knife on him. Listen to him scream.”

  Felter doubted Smoke would give any m
an the pleasure of screaming. But he kept that thought to himself. He also kept other thoughts to himself. He was sorry he ever got mixed up in this, and for the first time he could recall, he knew fear. For the first time in his evil life, Felter was really afraid of another man.

  “All right,” Felter said. “This time, by God, let’s take him.”

  He passed his orders down the street, from shack to shack. Three men to the right, three men to the left, three to stay in town, and two to circle around Smoke, coming in from the rear.

  But Smoke had other ideas, and he was putting them into play. His guns roared, a man screamed.

  “Damnit, Felter!” Lefty yelled, running across the dusty street. “The hombre’s in town!”

  Smoke’s .44s thundered. Lefty spun in the street, a cry pushing out of his throat as twin spots of red appeared on his shirt front. He stumbled to the dirt.

  “I’ll kill him!” a short hairy man snarled, running down the side of the street, darting in and out of doorways. He was shooting at everything he thought he saw.

  “Over here,” Smoke called.

  The outlaw spun and Smoke pulled both triggers of a shotgun he removed from under the counter of a tent saloon. The blast lifted the man off his feet, almost cutting him in half.

  Smoke reloaded the sawed-off as he ducked down an alley, behind a shack, and up that alley. He came face to face with an ugly bounty hunter. The bounty hunter fired, the lead creasing Smoke’s left arm, drawing blood. Smoke pulled the triggers of the sawed-off and blew the man’s head from his shoulders.

  He stepped into an open door just as a man ran toward him, his fists full of .45s. Splinters from the door frame jabbed painfully into Smoke’s cheek as he dropped the shotgun and grabbed his .44s. He shot the man in the chest and belly, the bounty hunter falling into a water trough. He tried to lift a .45 and Smoke shot him between the eyes at a distance no more than five feet. The trough became colored with red and gray.

  The street erupted in black powder, whining lead, and wild cursing. Horses broke from their hitch-rails and charged wild-eyed up and down the street, clouding the air with dust, rearing and screaming in fear.

  Smoke felt a hot sear of pain in his right leg. The leg buckled. He flung himself out of the doorway and to the protection of the trough as Canning hobbled painfully into the street, his hands full of guns belching smoke and flame, his eyes wild with hate.