Battle of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “Wasn’t no dream,” Andrews told him. “It was horses.”

  Smoke let his gaze roam back and forth looking for a shape that didn’t belong. It was too dark to be sure of anything at a distance. “Might be a good idea if you woke everybody up,” he said a moment later, when it appeared something scurried across the crest of a hill behind the bunkhouse, perhaps only a wolf or a coyote. “If this is part of that bunch we tangled with today, they’ll be lookin’ for revenge. Get these men out of the bunkhouse and have ’em spread out around the corrals and barns. I’ll go warn Mr. Chisum that something ain’t right out yonder. First of all, it’s too damn quiet. That’s damn near always a bad sign in my experience. Make sure nobody shoots unless we get shot at first. I’ll see if I can find out who it is, or if it’s anything at all.”

  Andrews got up while Pearlie pulled on his boots. He woke Cal up and whispered, “Git dressed, young ’un. Smoke says he thinks we may have us some company.”

  Andrews went down the rows of cots, awakening cowboys, while Smoke edged out the rear doorway, his senses keened. He could almost smell trouble coming on a soft night wind blowing across the ranch.

  Moving quietly in the shadow of the eaves, where the bunkhouse roof ended, he made his way to a corner and waited, hidden by the shadow until he crossed the ranch yard to a windmill tower and a water trough, crouching down, unable to shake the feeling that someone was out there in the hills. He could hear sleepy men stirring in the bunkhouse.

  He stepped lightly along the front porch and tapped on the door, watching the moonlit hills.

  “Who is it?” a deep voice belonging to Chisum inquired, a note of concern in his question.

  “Smoke Jensen. I think we’ve got some night visitors off to the west. Maybe north of us too.”

  Chisum swung the door open. “I’ll get my rifle and wake up the men.”

  “Buck Andrews is already gettin’ ’em up. I told ’em to spread out around the corrals and barns. I’ll slip out there to see if it’s just my imagination. I told everybody to hold their fire unless someone shoots at us first. And it’d be a good idea to douse that lantern.”

  Cletus appeared behind Chisum and Smoke was about to leave the porch to scout around.

  “What is it, Smoke?” Cletus asked.

  “I ain’t sure it’s anything yet. Just grab a rifle in case we got company.”

  The lantern inside went out as Smoke crept off the porch to make his way to a split rail fence around ranch headquarters, an open stretch of ground that could be dangerous to cross, yet he was without choices. Hunkered down, he raced across the yard in the bright moonlight, knowing an experienced gunman would see the gleam of metal from his rifle.

  A booming shot from a large-bore gun thundered from a grassy hilltop, the wink of a muzzle flash pinpointing the shooter’s location. A split pine iog on the top rail of the fence in front of Smoke most certainly saved his life from a heavy rifle slug, probably a .52 caliber, as the bullet splintered wood only a few inches from Smoke’s face, splitting the dry log almost in half.

  He dove to the ground, crawling beneath the bottom rail as fast as he could toward clumps of foot-high prairie grass that would hide him.

  “Mr. Evans got my message, no doubt,” Smoke hissed between gritted teeth, feeling his mind-set change suddenly, back to the savagery that had been a part of his nature in years past. Now, with a single-mindedness he could never fully explain to Sally, he would become a manhunter on a killing rampage. Something even he wasn’t able to comprehend took control of him, his thoughts, his actions, a lust for killing in any way possible, after someone made an attempt to take his life. Until it was over, his mind was a blank, his conscience without a voice, focused only on finding and killing his enemies. Afterward, he sometimes pondered on what it was that overtook him at times like this, when all reason and concern for his personal safety were discarded. All that mattered now was killing, silencing the gun on the hilltop… and he was sure there would be more guns out there, waiting for their opportunity to arrive.

  Boyd Johnson knew he’d missed. “It was that damn fence,” he whispered to his brother Lee. “I’ll git the sumbitch next time, soon as he shows hisself.”

  A rifle cracked from a hilltop north of the ranch, and then a chorus of gunfire erupted from every direction. Answering guns thundered from barns and hay sheds and deep shadows all across the ranch headquarters.

  “They was expectin’ us!” Lee shouted above the roar of so many guns.

  “Shut up, little brother!” Boyd snapped. “You’s gonna tell that bastard right where we is!”

  Boyd waited, aiming down at the fence where he’d last seen the big fellow, bare-chested, wearing buckskin leggings. “That was him,” he muttered angrily. “I had the sumbitch dead in my sights till he come to that goddamn fence. I know one thing fer sure ’bout this Jensen feller—he’s damn sure lucky, or he’d be dead as a pig right now.”

  The crackle of exploding rifles filled the night with sound, making Boyd uneasy. It helped to have keen hearing when a man was stalking about in the dark with a gun, but gunfire was drowning out every other noise, making it impossible to hear footsteps, the snap of a twig, or the brush of grasses against a man’s boots.

  “How come you ain’t shootin’, Boyd?” Lee asked, as minutes dragged by without Boyd firing a shot, which caused Lee to keep his gun silent too.

  “Nothin’ to shoot at yet,” Boyd answered. “No sense in lettin’ ’em know where we are till we got us a target we know we can hit. Let them others waste ammunition. Remember what Pa told us when we was kids huntin’ squirrels—Make every shot count, ’cause gunpowder an’ shot is expensive.” Scanning the spot where he’d last seen the gent he believed to be Jensen, it was hard to figure where such a big feller could be hiding.

  Something tapped him on the sole of his right boot, and Boyd whirled around, focusing his lone functioning eye on the outline of a bare-chested man holding a pair of pistols. “How the hell did you… ?” he exclaimed, as both six-guns belched stabbing fingers of yellow flame.

  Something cracked against Boyd’s forehead, slamming his head to the ground with the force of a mule’s kick. He heard Lee let out a scream as lightning bolts of pain shot through his skull in great waves. His vision blurred as he caught a glimpse of the man who had shot him and his brother, and damned if he could explain why the bastard seemed to be grinning just seconds before everything went black. He felt his body floating off the ground and he could not explain the sensation… Bodies didn’t float. But he was thankful that now, his terrible pain was fading away.

  Dewey Hyde pumped seven slugs through his Winchester in a fit of rage, knowing he’d hit nothing with any of his bullets. Spittle dribbled down into his beard when he forgot to spit with a wad of chewing tobacco in his left cheek, thus he spat and took seven more shells from his pocket, pushing them into the loading gate to fill its cartridge chamber. As the roar of gunfire came from all directions, he wondered idly if Marvin was having any better luck in the ravine below, to the west. This kind of a fight didn’t suit Dewey, not when he couldn’t see who he was shooting at so far away in the dark.

  “Turn around, creep,” someone said behind him. “I want to see your ugly face before I blow it off your skull.”

  Dewey made a quick half turn, swallowing tobacco juice in his haste and fear, bringing his rifle around for a shot at the owner of the strangely calm voice in the middle of a deadly gun battle like this. He saw a squatting figure, muscles bunched in his bare chest, aiming two pistols at him from only a few yards away.

  Before Dewey could aim, he heard a noise, an explosion, and in the same instant something akin to a red-hot poker entered the soft flesh beneath his chin—he was sure he could feel fire as it traveled upward, through his mouth and tongue, jarring him the way an iron-rimmed wagon wheel did when it struck a rock. He was scooted backward by the flaming poker entering his brain, and he could feel it tearing through the top of his head. Without tru
ly understanding what was happening, he puzzled over the hot sensation, like fire. How could fire get inside his skull like this?

  He lay back as the figure stepped over him, heading down to the ravine where Marvin was shooting. Dewey tried to yell, to warn Marvin, only his mouth was full of blood and tobacco juice and he could feel only the stump of his tongue moving when he tried to speak. He coughed and closed his eyes. Marvin would be able to take care of himself until Dewey could figure out what was wrong. For some reason, in spite of what had just happened to his head, he felt sleepy, and it was sure as hell the wrong time to be needing to take a nap.

  Marvin Hyde decided it was time to pull back. Some of the bullets fired from the ranch were coming too close, whizzing over his head by no more than a foot or two. He didn’t want somebody to get off a lucky shot that would turn out to be unlucky for him and in all this noise and confusion, Jessie Evans would never know he’d moved to a safer place.

  Marvin came slowly to his hands and knees, pulling his rifle along in the grass, its barrel still hot from so much shooting. A few feet more and he was behind the lip of the shallow ravine, where he could stand up.

  As he turned around, he came face-to-face with a half-naked man holding two pistols. “Who the hell are you?” Marvin asked, unable to recall this fellow’s face as being a member of Jessie’s gang.

  “Your executioner, plowboy. I’m gonna put a hole through your overalls while you’re wearin’ ’em.”

  “The hell you say!” Marvin cried, bringing his Winchester up for a shot.

  The roar of a Colt .44 caught Marvin in mid swing, before he could get his rifle muzzle lifted. He was torn off his planted feet by what felt like a whistling gust of wind striking his chest. His rifle flew from his hands as he fell backward from the force of it, and when he fell on his back it was as if an anvil had been dropped on his rib cage. He couldn’t breathe at all, not a single breath, and when he touched his chest he felt something wet on the front of his bib overalls, then the hole this sneaky stranger had promised.

  He saw the stranger hurry off into the darkness, and thought how he needed to warn Dewey. But try as he might, he could not raise his head or suck in enough wind to shout to his brother.

  He noticed his legs were trembling uncontrollably, feet twitching as though they had minds of their own. It occurred to Marvin that joining up with Jessie Evans and his gang hadn’t turned out to be such a good idea after all. Maybe he and Dewey should have stayed in Indian Territory, or headed north for the Kansas line.

  Off in the distance, he could hear the pop of rifles, and it sounded like they were moving away, growing fainter. With all his strength, he tried to draw in a breath of badly needed air, and found again he couldn’t, Marvin had always feared drowning in a river someplace, running out of air. How could a man drown out in the middle of a cow pasture?

  Twenty-four

  Smoke crept forward, toward the shape of a man lying prone at the crest of a rocky knob, firing down at the ranch in regular bursts, as fast as he could reload a Winchester .44. Smoke had a decided advantage tonight that he couldn’t always count on — the noise made by so many rifles firing at once. This made it far easier to slip up behind his quarry, not having to be so careful where he placed each foot.

  The rifleman fired seven shells and then paused to load his gun, giving Smoke just the opportunity he needed.

  “Turn around. I’ve got a message for you from Jessie,” he said quiedy, just loud enough to be heard above the din of guns banging.

  A Mexican with a thin mustache looked over his shoulder as he continued thumbing shells into his rifle. He opened his mouth to speak, until he realized he did not recognize Smoke’s face in the dark. Then he saw Smoke’s pistols.

  “Dios!”the man cried. “You are not with us!”

  “No, I ain’t.”

  “But you say you have a message from Senor Jessie…”

  “I suppose I should have said I have a message for Jessie,” Smoke said. “Trouble is, I can’t leave you alive to give it to him.”

  The Mexican seemed to understand at once that he stood no chance of turning his gun on Smoke in time. “Por favor, please do not kill me, senor.”

  Smoke answered softly, in case other members of Jessie’s gang were close enough to hear him despite the constant rattle of rifle fire back and forth. “Funny you’d beg for your life when you came here to kill us. If the tables were turned, would you give me a chance to ride off?”

  “Of course, senor. It would be the honorable thing to do in this situation, when you have the drop on me.”

  “You think I oughta give you a chance to aim that rifle at me first?”

  The Mexican hesitated, thinking. “I do not believe you would do that, senor.”

  “Then you’re callin’ me a liar.”

  “No, senor. I only say I do not think you would be so foolish.”

  Smoke lowered his pistols to his sides. “Aim it at me. Go ahead. I’ll give you plenty of time.”

  Another hesitation, then suddenly the Mexican squirmed around, sweeping his rifle barrel toward Smoke.

  “Long enough,” Smoke whispered, whipping his left pistol up, and gently squeezing the trigger so the motion wouldn’t ruin his aim.

  His Colt barked, jumping in his fist, its echo lost in a wall of noise coming from the surrounding hills and the ranch down below. The Mexican’s body jerked as though he’d been startled, jolted by the bullet passing through him at close range. He threw back his head and shrieked in pain, letting his rifle fall between his knees. He sat there a moment, staring at Smoke, then he looked down at his belly, where a dark stain was spreading over the front of his shirt

  “Madre,” he groaned, touching the bullet hole in his stomach with a fingertip.

  “Your mother can’t help you now,” Smoke said. “It’ll take you awhile to die, bein’ gutshot.”

  “Take me to the doctor in Mesilla!” the Mexican begged in a high-pitched voice. “Can’t you see that I am badly wounded and without a doctor, I will surely die?”

  Smoke turned away from the knob. “I might have considered it, if it wasn’t for the fact you came here to kill me an’ my friends. Adios, bastardo. ”He strolled away into the deep night shadows, looking for another victim, another paid assassin who came to South Springs ranch seeking a murderer’s payday.

  A rifle spat flame to his left, behind a thick pinon pine trunk. Smoke crept toward the light on the balls of his feet.

  Jack Johnson knelt in matted grass at the base of the tree, with brass cartridge casings scattered all around him. Now and then he saw a muzzle flash wink near one of the barns or a corner post of a corral. He wondered why Jessie Evans would order an attack on such a well-defended ranch. Jack guessed a dozen men were shooting back at them.

  “Evans is a fool,” Jack mumbled. “Nobody in his right mind would challenge an outfit armed to the teeth like this bunch, if he knew it ahead of time. This could go on all night…” He took aim at a flickering flash of light and fired, knowing he stood no chance whatsoever of hitting anything at this range. A banging series of gunshots answered his bullet, all high or wide of the mark, whining through tree branches above his head.

  He wondered about Boyd and Lee, guessing they were as frustrated with this standoff as he was. At least the three of them had found work in New Mexico Territory, no easy task for men with warrants out on them.

  Jack doubted anyone on either side had been wounded or killed, what with everyone shooting in the dark at uncertain targets.

  A short pause came in the endless gunfire, long enough for Jack to hear someone behind him, figuring it was probably Boyd or Lee. He glanced over his shoulder while he levered another shell into the firing chamber. “Ain’t this the worst?” he said to a man coming toward him from the rear, from friendly territory. “Can’t see a goddamn thing down there. Looks like somebody oughta decide this ain’t worth it, an’ call it off.”

  “Somebody should have,” a voice replie
d, a voice Jack didn’t recognize.

  Jack offered a simple solution. “Why don’t you go tell Mr. Evans this is a waste of time?”

  “I’m looking for him now. Where is he?”

  “Him an’ Bill Pickett an’ two more is near the big house down yonder. They was gonna try an’ get Chisum if they could.”

  “Shoot him down in the dark?”

  “Hell yes.” Jack began to wonder about all the strange questions, and he looked over his shoulder again. “Who the hell are you anyways, an’ how come you’re askin’ so goddamn many dumb questions?”

  “My name doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you’ve got only a few seconds to live.”

  A chilling tingle went down Jack’s spine when he realized he’d been talking to an enemy, one of the shooters from down below. With his rifle aimed in the wrong direction, it would take luck and perfect timing to get out of this alive. “I didn’t quite hear what you said, mister,” he replied, just as he made a springing dive forward toward a smaller tree trunk a few feet in front of him.

  A gun roared while Jack was in mid flight. Something snapped between his shoulder blades… it felt like his backbone had been broken. He landed on his face and chest without feeling any pain, and when he tried to move his arms and legs to crawl to the tree, his limbs refused to obey his commands. He lay there a moment, wondering what was wrong.

  “I’ll tell Evans what you said, that he oughta call this off,” the voice behind him said.

  Tiny tremors began in Jack’s hands and feet He saw a circle of light and he began moving toward it despite the fact that his legs were motionless. Somewhere in the night a cricket chirped, the last sound he heard before he was surrounded by an eerie blanket of silence.

  Smoke began working his way toward a dark grove of trees to the west of Chisum’s house, the logical place for men to take up firing positions if they were bent on killing whoever was inside.