“Oh. Sweet . . . Jesus!” Sheriff Reno shouted to the sky. And to those around him it sounded like a prayer.
Smile lines crinkled around Smoke Jensen’s gray eyes, and the corners of his mouth twitched. After this, those townies would be afraid to drink anywhere in the mountains. Of course, it would be hard on anyone who happened on the stream before it washed clear.
He’d left the carcasses out to bloat and ripen in the sun for two days. They had become so potent, that Smoke needed to cover his face with a wet kerchief to cut down the stench. Even then, it near to gagged him when he rigged the rope that held them in the water. He made sure it was easy to see.
A final look around the clearing by the stream, and he got ready to leave. Carefully, Smoke wiped out any sign of his presence as he departed. Within a minute, only the muted echo of a soft guffaw remained of the last mountain man.
“What’s that awful smell?” a townsman asked of Sheriff Reno.
“Smells like skunk. Mighty ripe skunk,” the lawman replied.
“It’s coming from the crick,” one of Quint Stalker’s outlaws advised.
“Skunks don’t take baths,” another contradicted.
“Hey, there’s a rope hangin’ down over the water,” another shop clerk deputy declared. “Somethin’s on the end of it.”
Three of Stalker’s men rode over to investigate. One dismounted and bent over the bank. He turned back quickly enough, his face a study in queasiness.
“ ’Fore God, I hate that Smoke Jensen. He’s put three rotten skunks in the water.”
“Three skunks?” the sheriff echoed.
“Three rotten skunks. Flesh all but washed off of ’em, guts all strung out.”
Gagging, retching sounds came from a trio of townies. Faces sickly green, they wobbled off into the meadow to void their stomachs. One finished before the others and turned back to the sheriff, who sat his horse with a puzzled expression.
“We—we drank from that crick not half a mile back. Filled our canteens, too.”
A couple of Stalker’s hard cases began to puke up their guts. Those affected wasted no time in remounting. They put heels to the flanks of their animals and fogged off down the trail in the direction of Socorro. Sheriff Jake Reno remained gape-mouthed for a moment, the slight wound on his hindside stinging from the sweat that ran down his back, then bellowed in rage. “Goddamn you, Smoke Jensen! I’m gonna kill you, you hear me? I’m gonna kill you dead, dead dead, Smoke Jensen!”
* * *
While Smoke Jensen frazzled the nerves of the posse, five hard-faced men paid a visit to the Widow Tucker and her three small children. Their leader, Forrest Gore, had been barely able to stay in the saddle on the long ride out from Socorro. Jimmy Tucker saw them first, and the smooth, hard-callused soles of his bare feet raised clouds as he darted from the barn to the rear of the house.
“Some more bad guys comin’, Maw,” he shouted as he banged through the back door.
Martha Tucker looked up from the pie crust she had been rolling out, and wiped a stray lock of hair from her damp forehead with the back of one hand. The effort left a white streak. “You know what to do, Jimmy.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the boy replied.
He stepped to the kitchen door, put his little fingers between full lips, and blew out a shrill whistle. Rose and Tommy Tucker came scampering from where they had been playing under a huge alamogordo. A stray breeze rattled the heart-shaped, pale green leaves of the old cottonwood as they deserted it.
“Into the loft,” their mother instructed.
Without a protest or question, the smaller children climbed the ladder to where all three youngsters slept. Rose covered her head with a goose-down quilt. Big-eyed, Tommy watched what went on downstairs.
“Hello the house,” Forrest Gore called in a bored tone. “We mean you no harm. They’s five of us. May we come up and take water for our horses?”
“You can go to the barn for that,” Martha said from the protection of a shuttered window.
“Thank ye, kindly. Though it’s scant hospitable of ye.”
“Hospitality is somewhat short around here of late. If yer of a mind to be friendly, when you come back, I’ll have my son set out a jug of spring water for your own thirst, and a pan of spoon bread.”
“Now, that’s a whole lot nicer. We’re beholden.” When the five returned, Jimmy had placed the offered refreshments on the small front porch and withdrawn behind the door. The hard-faced men ate hungrily of the slightly sweet bread, and drank down the water to the last drop. When the last crumb of spoon bread had been disposed of, Forrest Gore glanced up to the window; he knew he was being watched.
“Mighty tasty. Say, be you Miz Tucker?”
“I am.” Curt answers had become stock in trade for Martha Tucker.
“Then I have a message for you. You’ve forty-eight hours to pack up and get off the place.”
“I thought I’d made it plain enough before. We are not leaving.”
“Oh, but you got to now, Miz Tucker. Ya see, yer late husband rest his soul, sold the ranch the day he was murdered by that back-shootin’ scum, Smoke Jensen. No doubt he was killed for the money he carried.”
“I don’t believe you.” Martha Tucker had opened the door and stepped across the threshold.
“ ’Fraid you’re gonna have to, Miz Tucker,” Forrest Gore replied with a polite tip of his hat in acknowledgement.
“Not without proof. Lawrence didn’t take the title deed with him to town. He couldn’t have sold, and he didn’t have any intention of doing so. Now please leave.”
“Sorry you see it that way, Miz Tucker. But we got our orders. Forty-eight hours, not a second more. Pack what you can, and get out. The new owner will be movin’ in direc’ly.”
“We won’t budge until I see the bill of sale and a transfer of title.”
Gore’s face stiffened woodenly and his eyes slitted. “That’s mighty uppity lawyer talk, comin’ from a woman. A woman’s place is to do as she’s told. Might be your health would remain a whole lot better, if you’d do just that.”
“Meaning what?” Frost edged her words.
“Your husband’s done already got hisself killed over this place. Could be it might happen to you next.”
“Jimmy.” Tension crackled in the single word, as Martha reached back through the open door.
Her son handed her a Greener shotgun, which she leveled on the center of Forrest Gore’s chest. Deftly, she eared back both hammers. “Get the hell off our land. And tell whoever sent you that next time, I’ll shoot first and ask questions after. My oldest son’s a crack shot, too. So there’ll be plenty of empty saddles.”
Gore blanched white in mingled fear and rage. “You’ll wish you’d done what’s right . . . while you still had the chance.” He mounted with his gaze fixed on the barrels of the scattergun. Nothing worser than a woman with a gun, he reminded himself in a sudden sweat. Astride his horse he cut his eyes to his men. “Let’s ride.”
Smoke Jensen knew a man could not drive a bear. Not even a big old brown, if one could be found in these desert mountains. But antelope and deer could be herded, if a fellow took his time about it. Through all the days of his travels in the Cibola Range, Smoke had often cut sign of deer. Now he set out seriously to locate a suitable gathering.
His search took only three hours in the early morning. He counted some thirty adult animals, a dozen yearlings, and a scattering of fawns. They would do well for what he had in mind. Slowly he closed on the herd got them ambling the way he wanted.
It took all the skill Smoke Jensen possessed not to spook the deer and set them off in a wild stampede. A little nudge here, another there, then ease off for a while. So long as they only felt a bit uncomfortable grazing where they stood, they would remain tractable. By noon he had them out of the small gorge where he had found them.
“Easy goes,” he reminded his mount and himself.
By putting more pressure on the herd leader, he got t
hem lined out up a sloping game trail toward the crest. That, Smoke knew, overlooked the main trail. And that’s where he wanted them any time now. The wary animals heard the approach of other humans before Smoke did. He nudged the creatures out into a line near the top of the ridge, then left the rest in the hands of Lady Luck.
With a whoop, Smoke set the deer into a panicked run. They boiled over the rim and thundered down the reverse slope. Alerted by the pound of many small hooves, the posse halted and looked upward. Dust boiled up through the pinon boughs, and a forest of antlers jinked one way, then the other.
Before they could recover their wits, the outlaws and townsmen who made up Sheriff Reno’s posse became inundated by the frightened animals. The stricken beasts bowled several men off their horses, set other mounts into terrorized flight. Four townies wailed in helpless alarm, and abandoned the search for Smoke Jensen right there and now.
“Aaaawh . . . shiiiii-it!” Sheriff Reno howled in frustration, as a huge stag fixed his antlers on the lawman’s cavorting pony and made a spraddle-legged advance.
Seven
Sheriff Jake Reno’s eyes bulged, unable to cut away from that magnificent twelve-point rack. Somehow, he knew Smoke Jensen had been behind the appearance of the deer. The grand stag pawed the ground again and snorted, hindquarters flexed for a lunge. Sensing the menace, Sheriff Reno’s mount reared, forehooves lashing in defensive fury. It spilled the lawman out of the saddle.
He landed heavily on the sorest part of his posterior, and howled like a banshee. Alarmed, the stag lurched to one side and joined its harem in wild flight. An echo of mocking laughter bounded down from above. Sheriff Reno looked around to find that fully half of the remaining posse had deserted him. That left him with little choice.
He pulled in his horns.
Only eleven men remained with the posse when the corrupt lawman gave up his search for Smoke Jensen and turned back toward Socorro. Smoke watched them go. Faint signs of amusement lightened Smoke’s face as he gazed down a long slope at the retreating backs. One leg cocked over the pommel of his saddle, he reached into a shirt pocket for a slender, rock-hard cigar, and struck a lucifer on the silver chasing of his saddlehorn.
A thin, blue-white stream of aromatic smoke wreathed the head of Smoke Jensen as he puffed contentedly. Walt Reardon had thoughtfully provided the cigars among the other supplies the hands had obtained when they planned to get Smoke out of the Socorro jail. These were of Italian origin and strong enough to stagger a bull buffalo.
Not exactly Smoke’s brand of choice, it would have to do, he reckoned. And he would have to make tracks soon. South and west would best suit. That would put him closer to Arizona, when Ty Hardy and Walt Reardon brought word from Jeff York.
Smoke Jensen had met Jeff York a number of years ago. The young Arizona Ranger had been working undercover against the gang and outlaw stronghold of Rex Davidson, same as Smoke. When each learned the identity of the other, they joined their lots to bring down the walls of every building in Davidson’s outlaw town of Dead River, and exterminate the vermin that lived there. As he rode down out of the northern reaches of the Cibola Range, Smoke Jensen recalled that day, long past . . .
Their pockets bulging with extra cartridges, York carrying a Henry and Smoke carrying the sawed-off express gun, they looked at each other.
“You ready to strike up the band, Ranger?”
“Damn right! ” York said with a grin.
“Let’s do it.”
The men slipped the thongs off their six-guns and eased them out of leather a time or two, making certain the oiled interiors of the holsters were free.
York eased back the hammer on his Henry, and Smoke jacked back the hammers on the express gun.
They stepped inside the noisy and beer-stinking saloon. The piano player noticed them first. He stopped playing and singing and stared at them, his face chalk-white. Then he scrambled under the lip of the piano.
“Well, well!” an outlaw said, laughing. “Would you boys just take a look at Shirley. [Smoke had been using the outrageous moniker of Shirley DeBeers, a sissyfied portrait painter, for his penetration of the outlaw stronghold.] He’s done shaven offen his beard and taken to packin ’ iron. Boy, you bes’ git shut of them guns, fore you hurt yourself!’
Gridley stood up from a table where he d been drinking and playing poker—and losing. “Or I decide to take ’em off you and shove ’em up your butt, lead and all, pretty-boy. Matter of fact, I think I’ll jist do that, right now.”
“The name isn’t pretty-boy, Gridley,” Smoke informed him.
“Oh, yeah? Well, may haps you right. I’ll jist call you shit! How about that?”
“Why don’t you call him by his real name? ” York said, a smile on his lips.
“And what might that be, punk?” Gridley sneered the question. “Alice?”
“First off” York said, “I’ll tell you I’m an Arizona Ranger. Note the badges we’re wearing? And his name, you blow-holes, is Smoke Jensen! ”
The name dropped like a bomb. The outlaws in the room sat stunned, their eyes finally observing the gold badges on the chests of the men.
Smoke and York both knew one thing for an ironclad fact: The men in the room might all be scoundrels and thieves and murderers, and some might be bullies and cowards, but when it came down to it, they were going to fight.
"Then draw, you son of a bitch!” Gridley hollered, his hands dropping to his guns.
Smoke pulled the trigger on the express gun. From a distance of no more than twenty feet, the buckshot almost tore the outlaw in two.
York leveled the Henry and dusted an outlaw from side to side. Dropping to one knee, he levered the empty out and a fresh round in, and shot a fat punk in the belly.
Shifting the sawed-off shotgun, Smoke blew the head off another outlaw. The force of the buckshot lifted the headless outlaw out of one boot and flung him to the sawdust-covered floor.
York and his Henry had put half a dozen outlaws on the floor, dead, dying, or badly hurt.
The huge saloon was filled with gunsmoke, the crying and moaning of the wounded, and the stink of relaxed bladders from the dead. Dark gray smoke from the black powder cartridges stung the eyes and obscured the vision of all in the room . . .
Oh, that had been a high old time all right, Smoke reflected. But it hadn’t ended there. Smoke had gone on back East to reclaim his beloved wife, Sally, who was busy being delivered of twins in the home of her parents in Keene, New Hampshire. Jeff York and Louis Longmont had accompanied him. And a good thing, too. Rex Davidson and his demented followers had carried the fight to Smoke. And it finally ended in the streets of Keene, with Rex Davidson’s guts spilled on the ground.
The twins, Louis Arthur and Denise Nichole, were near to full grown now. They lived and studied in Europe. But that was another story, Smoke reminded himself as he gazed upon a smoky smudge on the horizon, far out on a wide mountain vale, vast enough to be called a plain.
Smoke Jensen rode into Horse Springs quietly. He attracted little attention from the locals, mostly simple farmers of Mexican origin. Ollas de los Caballos, the place had been called before the white man came. Near the center of town was a rock basin, fed by cold, crystal-clear, deep mountain springs. This natural formation provided drinking water for everyone in town. Fortunately for the farmers, a wide, shallow stream also meandered through the valley and allowed for irrigation of crops of corn, beans, squash, chili peppers, and other staples.
Smoke splashed through it at a rail-guarded ford and saw at once that it also accommodated as a place of entertainment. Small, brown-skinned boys, naked as the day they had been bom, frolicked in the water, the sun striking highlights off their wet skin. Clearly, they lacked any knowledge of the body taboo that afflicted most whites Smoke knew. For, when they took notice of the stranger among them, they broke off their play to stand facing him, giggle like a flock of magpies, and make shy, though friendly waves of their hands.
Returning thei
r greetings, Smoke rode on to the center of town. On the Plaza de Armas, he located what passed for a hotel in Horse Springs. POSADA DEL NORTE—Inn of the North—had been hand-lettered in red, now faded pink, and outlined in white and green over the arch in an adobe block wall that guarded the building front.
He dismounted and walked his horse through the tall, double-hung, plank gates into a tree-shaded courtyard. A barefoot little lad, who most likely would have preferred to be out at the creek with his friends, took the reins and led Smoke’s big-chested roan toward a stable. Smoke entered a high-ceilinged remarkably cool hallway. To his right, a sign, likewise in Spanish, with black letters on white tile, advised; OFICINA.
Smoke stepped through into the office and had to work mightily to conceal his reaction. Behind a small counter he saw one of the most strikingly beautiful young women he had ever encountered. Her skin, which showed in a generous, square-cut yolk, a graceful stalk of neck and intriguing, heart-shaped face, was flawless. A light cast of olive added a healthy glow to the faintest of cafe au lait complexions. Her dress had puffy sleeves, with lace at the edges, and around the open bodice, also in tiers over her ample bosom, and in ruffled falls down to a narrow waist. There, what could be seen of the skirt flared in horizontal gathers that reminded Smoke of a cascade.
Her youthful lips had been touched with a light application of ruby rouge, and were full and promised mysteries unknown to other women. For a moment, raw desire flamed in the last mountain man. Then, reason— and his unwavering dedication to his lovely and beloved Sally—prevailed. Those sweet lips twitched in a teasing smile as the vision behind the registration desk acknowledged his admiring stare.
“Yes, Señor? Do you desire a room for the night?” Her voice, Smoke Jensen thought, sounded like little tinkling bells in a field of daisies. “Uh . . . ummm, yes. For a week, at least.”
Cunning of the Mountain Man Page 6
