Trek of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  The Yankees had been good at making escape-proof cells. This marshal’s jail matched anything he had endured during his incarceration, in spite of its superficial look of disrepair.

  Frustrated, he rattled the bars. For all the rust, the door was solid. He rested his forehead against the cool metal and shook as if he had the ague. Being too trusting—gullible!—had landed him in a world of trouble. Jake had duped him and then made off with the money and a bag full of food. Knight smiled wryly. Of all the troubles, he missed the flour sack filled with food the most. His belly still churned and grumbled in spite of the bread and other food he had eaten while robbing the restaurant.

  “Marshal! Are you going to feed me? You can’t let me starve.” He glanced up at the tiny window. Pale dawn seeped through. “It’s breakfast. Bring me some eggs and ham. Maybe some cornbread to go with it. Or biscuits and gravy.”

  “Shut yer yap. I’ll get around to feedin’ you when I danged well feel like it. Right now I’m going to see if Slowpoke’s still among us or if you don’t get fed at all ’cause he died.”

  The outer door slammed. Knight had the sense of being completely alone. He sank onto the cot and considered curling up to grab a few more minutes of sleep. Whether the deputy lived or died had little effect on what they would do to him. Even if they didn’t stretch his neck, he was bound for prison due to the assault and robbery.

  As that thought sunk in, Knight turned cold all over. He had endured so much in Elmira. Never again. Better to die than be caged like an animal. He stood, pulled the blanket from the cot and began tearing it into long strips wide enough to support his weight. It took him the better part of fifteen minutes to get a noose made and to fasten the free end of his crude rope through the bars in the window where he couldn’t even look out to see the new day.

  * * *

  “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” The marshal slammed back the door leading into his office, turned and grabbed the keys, and rushed to the cell door. He stared up at Knight dangling from the rude noose, unmoving. He fumbled and finally got the cell door open. A quick step took him to the dangling body. Strong arms circled Knight’s thighs and lifted to get him down.

  The marshal expected deadweight. Instead he caught an elbow to the top of his skull. He staggered back and released Knight. For a moment, Knight kicked and then got free of the harness he had made from the blanket. Landing on his feet, he stepped forward, then dropped as hard as he could to drive his knee into the marshal’s big gut. Air whistled from the lawman’s body. He gagged, turned purple, and rolled onto his side. As he gasped for air, Knight acted.

  Like a cowboy during branding, he whipped a length of blanket around, caught the man’s wrists and bound them. A second strip fastened the marshal’s hands to his ankles. Grunting with exertion, Knight pulled his victim into the cell and looked down on his handiwork.

  “Sorry, Marshal. I didn’t want to do this.”

  “I’ll have the army after you. I’ll—”

  Before he got another word out, Knight whipped a third piece of the threadbare blanket around his head and tightened it into a gag. Only then did he exit the cell and slam the door. A quick turn locked the marshal up.

  “Believe me, I hope the deputy is going to be all right. I might have robbed the restaurant, but I never touched him. If anything, I went out of my way to avoid him. The one you want is named Leonard Jacobs.”

  Knight closed the door between the cells and the marshal’s office, turning the key in that lock, too. The lawman was as secure as Knight had been only a few minutes earlier. He tossed the keys onto the desk, then hesitated when he saw a stack of wanted posters. His likeness would be among them soon enough if he didn’t clear out. Wasting time pawing through the pile made it all the more likely he would get caught, but he did it anyway. Halfway down he saw a smeared picture of a fugitive who might be Jake. The crimes were all robbery and swindling. He was a known confidence man. Knight found a pencil, scribbled a hasty note to the marshal letting him know this was who he really wanted for the assault on the deputy and then started out the door.

  He again hesitated.

  Hanging on a peg beside the door was a gun belt with a revolver thrust into a holster. Hand shaking, he took it down, drew the pistol and looked at it. He had seen plenty of six-guns in the army. This was a Colt Navy cap-and-ball. He thrust it back into the holster and slung the belt around his meager middle. It almost went around him twice, given the marshal’s girth and his own lack. He fastened the buckle and slung it over his shoulder, then grabbed a leather pouch with two loaded cylinders and more slugs, caps and powder. Only then did he venture out into the street.

  The sun had risen high enough to hang above the pine trees at the far end of town. Commerce proceeded and the town’s citizens went about their chores. They had no idea that a desperate outlaw joined them as they conducted their business.

  The town was small enough that Knight found the livery stable quickly without asking anyone for directions. He hesitated to enter. From the street he saw four horses stabled there, a towheaded youngster of eight or nine dutifully giving each a nosebag of feed. His hemming and hawing saved him. Two men came from the rear of the stable. Both carried rifles but didn’t wear sidearms. He spun away and pressed against the rough-hewn wall as he overheard them.

  “He’s a damned cheapskate. We caught that varmint. We deserve more than a shot of whiskey for our trouble.”

  “Yeah, Cousin Ned, you’re right. We coulda got our heads blowed off. We didn’t know what to expect after Slowpoke got all bashed up like that other than we was on the trail of a real desperado. Being summoned to ride with the posse interrupted my sleep. We shoulda got paid at least a dollar, like any other time.”

  “If you ask me, the marshal kept the posse money for hisself. The mayor puts up ten dollars a month, silver, not any of that worthless Yankee greenback scrip, just for such things, and it shouldn’t matter if we was out a minute or a day. The rules say a posse member gets a dollar a day.”

  “We did get a drink.”

  “Yeah, but it was trade whiskey. It’s still chewin’ holes in my gut.”

  Knight slid the Colt Navy from the holster and held it down at his side. Cocking it would draw attention. He kept his thumb on the hammer, just in case he had to get off a quick round. The thought of shooting it out with the two who had been in the posse that caught him the night before made him slump. The first report from his pistol—or their rifles—would bring the rest of the town running. He would be caught for sure.

  “What are you doin’, mister?”

  Knight jumped a foot. He swung the six-gun around and hid it behind him as he stared down at the boy who had been working in the stalls.

  “I . . . I’m looking for Doc Phillips.”

  “Ain’t got no sick animals here. Not today. They’s all healthy and, well, as strong as horses.” The boy smirked at this small joke. “You want the doc, go on to the end of the street until you see a sign carved to look like a horse. Or if you kin read, his name’s on it.”

  “Much obliged.”

  Knight backed off, kept the drawn six-shooter out of sight, and tried not to make it look as if he fled from the two men just emerging from the stables. He walked with shoulders pulled back and spine straight . . . as if he had every right to be out and about as a free man. If those two had gotten a good look at him the night before, he might find himself exchanging lead with them. The hairs on the back of his neck rippled, then settled down the farther he got from the stables.

  Before his heart stopped pounding from the close call with the posse, he saw the horse-shaped sign swinging in the sultry wind. Knight slowed and finally stopped. What he intended was crazy. If not outright insane, then reckless and not a little bit stupid. With a deep breath, he opened the low wooden gate and went to the veterinarian’s door. Two quick taps almost convinced him to leave. Before he could, the door opened and a young man, hardly in his twenties, with mussed sandy hair and bloodshot eyes,
confronted him.

  “What is it?”

  “You’re Dr. Phillips?”

  “Am. And you are?”

  “I came to see how your patient is doing.”

  “The four-legged one or the deputy?”

  “Slowpoke. How’s he feeling?”

  “Can’t say since he hasn’t recovered consciousness yet. You a friend? I don’t remember seeing you around town before.” The vet’s eyes fixed on the gun belt slung over Knight’s shoulder.

  “Passing through when I heard. His family and mine . . .” Knight let the sentence trail off so the vet could draw his own conclusion.

  “Come on in. I’ve got him in the back room.” Knight followed the young man to a small room outfitted like a medical doctor’s surgery. He saw bottles of carbolic acid and a few surgical instruments next to a small library of books on large animal anatomy. One lay open. Knight stood on tiptoe and scanned the pages. The vet hunted for ways he might help the deputy.

  “He’s not a sheep, you know.” Knight went to a cot where a pale, unmoving man stretched out under a thin sheet.

  “I don’t know squat about fixing people, and he needs help of some sort. I’m trying to figure out what.”

  Knight turned Slowpoke’s head slowly and saw how the back of his head had been bashed in. “I’ve seen a wound similar to this. A man was grazed by a cannonball. You’ve got to relieve the pressure from the bone fragments or he will die.” He reached for a sharp knife on the table.

  “Not so fast. I can’t let you operate on him. Who the hell are you?”

  “The one who’s trying to save his life.” Knight shoved the vet, causing him to stumble. As he tried to right himself, Knight drew the Colt Navy and pointed it squarely at him. “Do I tie you up or do you help me?”

  “You can’t take that knife to him. You—”

  Moving faster than he thought possible in his condition, Knight stepped up and swung the pistol, laying the barrel alongside Dr. Phillips’s temple. Stunned, the man dropped to his knees. In that condition, Knight easily tied him up with cord he found on the table. Before the vet regained his senses, Knight picked up the knife, tested its tip, and then sloshed carbolic acid over it.

  “Don’t. You’ll kill him.”

  “I might, but he’s going to die if I don’t do something fast.” Knight dabbed away caked blood, cleansed the wound, and scraped away all the hair on the deputy’s scalp that might get into the wound.

  He sucked in his breath and held it as he slipped the knife’s tip under a bone fragment and applied outward pressure. The bit of skull popped free. Pressure using a bandage stanched some blood flow enough to let him get to a second, more dangerous piece of bone driven into the brain. “Do you have forceps?”

  “In my kit bag. Behind the table.”

  Knight relaxed the pressure on the bandage. Blood flowed. If the vet had helped, the deputy would have a better chance of not bleeding to death. He found the bag and dragged it beside the cot. After a few seconds of rummaging around, he found the forceps similar to those he had used to good effect during the war. Applying them to the edge of the bone, he withdrew it with steady pressure, then tossed it onto the floor. Only then did he work to stop the bleeding. After several minutes, he sank back on his heels. His hands shook.

  “I think he’ll make it now. He might not be as sharp as he once was but—”

  “They call him Slowpoke for a reason,” Phillips said. “You really got the fragments out of his brain?”

  “They weren’t too deeply embedded.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Someone who is going to take your horse, the one I see tethered out back.” Knight wiped blood from his hands, slung the gun belt over his shoulder, then climbed through the window. “Don’t let him thrash about too much. If you have to, give him whiskey to kill the pain if he ever wakes up. That’s all right.”

  “If? You mean he might still die?”

  “There’re never any easy operations or outcomes with head wounds.” Knight kicked over the ledge and dropped to the ground.

  In the small surgery he heard Dr. Phillips thrashing about, trying to get to the knife to free himself. It wouldn’t take such a young, vital, well-fed man long. Knight wanted to be a mile away on the stolen horse when Phillips went to report to the marshal all that had happened—and found out how the town’s lawman had been locked up in his own jail.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  William W. Johnstone is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over three hundred books, including the bestselling series Smoke Jensen: The Mountain Man, Preacher: The First Mountain Man, Flintlock, MacCallister and Will Tanner: Deputy U.S. Marshal, and the stand-alone thrillers Black Friday, Tyranny, and Stand Your Ground.

  Visit his website at www.williamjohnstone.net.

  Notes

  1 Return of the Mountain Man

  2 The Last Mountain Man