Puma held a large piece of deer meat in both hands, chewing it as fast as his stubby teeth would allow. “Yep. That was a right smart fracas, all right.”
“Can you tell me about how he got ’em, Puma?”
The old man looked up, over his venison, and grinned. “Soon’s I finish this here meat, boy. Never could eat ’an talk at the same time.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The three men sat around the campfire eating quietly, enjoying their meal. Occasional small flurries of snow fell, hissing and crackling in the flames, while frigid mountain air ruffled fringe on the old man’s buckskin shirt and caused the younger men to hunch their shoulders in their heavy coats.
Pearlie noticed the mountain man didn’t seem to mind the cold. His blood must be as thick as molasses after all these years up here in the high lonesome, he thought.
Puma finished his venison, wiped his greasy hands on his buckskin shirt, and fished out a stogie out of his pocket. He lit it with a burning twig from the fire and laid back against a log, coffee tin in one hand and cigar in the other.
“That were the last battle fer some of ol’ friends, Dupre, Greybull, and the midget, Audie. They’d come out of the mountains to help their friend, Preacher, and his young boy, Smoke, to git his revenge. T’was near the town of Bury, but the final fight took place at an ol’ ghost town, name of Slate.”
He took a few pulls on the cigar, getting it going just right, then sipped his coffee and began his tale.
* * *
The ever-shrinking band of outlaws and gunhands looked toward the west. Another cloud of black smoke filled the air.
Lansing began cursing. “How in the hell are those old men doin’ it?” he yelled. “We’re fightin’ a damned bunch of ghosts.”
“Are you stayin’ or leavin’?” Stratton asked.
“Might as well see it through,” the man said bitterly. Those were the last words he would speak. A Sharps barked, its big slug taking the rancher in the center of his chest, knocking him spinning from his saddle.
“I’ve had it!” a gunhand said. He spun his horse and rode away. A dozen men followed him. No one tried to stop them.
“Look around us,” Brown said.
The riders examined the land. A mile away, in a semicircle, ten mountain men sat their ponies. As if on signal, the mountain men lifted their rifles high above their heads.
Turkel, one of the most feared gunhawks in the territory, looked the situation over through field glasses. “That there’s Preacher,” he said, pointing. “That ’un over yonder is the Frenchman, Dupre, The one ridin’ a mule is Greybull. That little bitty shithead is the midget, Audie. Boys, I don’t want no truck with them old men. I’m tellin’ you all flat-out.”
The aging mountain men began waving their rifles.
“What are they tryin’ to tell us?” Reese asked.
“That Smoke is waitin’ in the direction they’re pointing,” Richards said. “They’re telling us to tangle with him—if we’ve got the sand in us to do it.”
Potter did some fast counting. Out of what was once a hundred and fifty men, only nineteen remained, including himself. “Hell, boys! He’s only one man. There’s nineteen of us!”
“There was about this many over at that minin’ camp, too,” Britt said. “Way I see it is this, we either fight ten of them ringtailed-tooters, or we fight Smoke Jensen.”
“I’ll take Smoke,” Howard said. But he wasn’t all that happy with his choice.
The mountain men began moving, tightening the circle. The gunhands turned their horses and moved out, allowing themselves to be pushed toward the west.
“They’re pushin’ us toward the ghost town,” Williams said.
Richards smiled at Smoke’s choice of a showdown spot.
As the abandoned town appeared on the horizon, located on flats between the Lemhi River and the Beaverhead Range, Turkel’s buddy, Harris, reined up and pointed. “Goddamn place is full of people!”
“Miners,” Brown said. “They come to see the show. Drinking and betting. Them mountain men spread the word.”
“Just like it was at the camp on the Uncompahgre,” Richards said with a grunt.7 “Check your weapons. Stuff your pockets full of extra shells. I’m going back to talk with Preacher. I want to see how this deal is going down.”
Richards rode back to the mountain men, riding with one hand in the air.
“That there’s far enough,” Lobo said. “Speak your piece.”
“We win this fight, do we have to fight you men, too?”
“No,” Preacher said quickly. “My boy Smoke done laid down rules.”
His boy! Richards thought. Jesus God. “We win, do we get to stay in this part of the country?”
“If’n you win,” Preacher said, “you leave with what you got on your backs. If’n we win, we pass the word, and here ’tis. If’n you or any of your people ever come west of Kansas, you dead men. That clear?”
“You’re a hard man, Preacher.”
“You wanna see just how hard?” Preacher challenged.
“No,” Richards said, shaking his head. “We’ll take chances with Smoke.”
“You would be better off taking your chances with us,” Audie suggested.
Richards looked at Nighthawk. “What do have to say about it?”
Nighthawk made no sound.
Richards looked pained.
“That means haul your ass back to your friends,” Phew said.
Richards trotted his horse back to what was left of his band. He told them the rules of engagement.
Britt looked uphill toward a crumbling store. “There he is.”
Smoke stood alone on the rotted boardwalk. The men could see his twin .44’s belted around his waist. He held a Henry repeating rifle in his right hand, a double-barreled express gun in his left hand. Smoke ducked into the building, leaving only a slight bit of dust to signal where he once stood.
“Two groups of six,” Richards said, “one group of three, one group of four. Britt, take your men in from the rear. Turkel, take your boys in from the east. Reese, take your people in from the west. I’ll take my hands in from this direction. Move out.”
* * *
Smoke had removed his spurs, hanging them on the saddle horn of Drifter. As soon as he ducked out of sight, he ran from the building, staying in the alley. He stashed his express gun on one side of the street in an old store, his rifle across the road. He met up with Skinny Davis first, in the gloom of what had once been a saloon.
“Draw!” Davis hissed, hunkering down.
Smoke cleared leather and put two holes in the gunman’s chest before Davis could cock his .44’s. The thunder from his Colts echoed across the valley.
“In Pat’s Saloon!” someone shouted farther down the street.
Williams jumped through an open, glassless window of the saloon. Just as his boots hit the floor, Smoke shot him, his .44 slug knocking the gunslick back out the window to the boardwalk. Williams was hurt, but not out of it yet. He crawled along the side of the building, one arm broken and dangling, useless, blood pouring from a gaping bullet wound in his shoulder.
“Smoke Jensen!” Cross yelled. “You ain’t got the guts to face me!”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Smoke muttered savagely, taking careful aim and shooting the outlaw, feeling his pistol slam into his palm. A ball of lead struck Cross in the stomach, doubling him over and dropping him to the weed-grown, dusty road.
The miners had hightailed it to ridges surrounding the town. There they sat, drinking and betting and cheering. The mountain men stood and squatted and sat on an opposite ridge, watching.
A bullet dug a trench along a plank, sending tiny splinters flying, a few of them striking Smoke’s face, stinging and bringing a few drops of blood from his cheeks.
Smoke ran out the back of the saloon and came face-to-face with Simpson, a gunhawk with both hands filled with .44’s.
Smoke pulled the trigger on his own .44’s,
the double hammerblows of lead taking Simpson in his lower chest, slamming him to the ground, dying from two mortal wounds.
Quickly reloading, Smoke grabbed up Simpson’s guns and tucked them behind his gun belt. He ran down the alley. The last of Richards’s gunslicks stepped out of a gaping doorway just as Smoke cut to his right, leaping through an open window. A bullet burned Smoke’s shoulder. Spinning, he fired both Colts, one bullet striking Martin in his throat, the second taking the gunnie just above his nose, almost tearing off the upper part of his right cheek.
Smoke caught a glimpse of someone running. He dropped to one knee and fired. His slug shattered Rogers’s hip, sending the big man sprawling in the dirt, howling and cursing. Reese spurred his horse and charged the building where Smoke was crouched. He smashed his horse’s shoulder against a thin plank door and thundered in. The horse, wild-eyed and scared, lost its footing and fell, pinning Reese to the floor, crushing his belly and chest. Reese screamed in agony as blood filled his mouth and darkness clouded his eyes.
Smoke left the dying man and ran out a side door.
“Get him, Turkel!” Brown shouted.
Smoke glanced up. Turkel was on the roof of an old building, a rifle in his hand. Smoke flattened against a building as Turkel pulled the trigger, the slug plowing up dirt at Smoke’s feet. Smoke snapped off a shot, getting lucky as the bullet hit the gunhand in his chest. Turkel dropped the rifle and fell to the street, crashing down to a rotted section of boardwalk. He did not move.
A bullet from nowhere nicked a small part of Smoke’s right ear. Blood poured down the side of his face. He ran to the spot where he had hidden his shotgun, grabbing it and cocking it just as the door frame filled with men.
Firing both barrels, Smoke cleared the doorway of all living things, including Britt, Harris, and Smith, buckshot knocking men off the boardwalk, leaving them dead and dying in the street.
“Goddamn you, Jensen!” Brown screamed in rage, stepping out into the empty roadway.
Smoke dropped his shotgun and picked up a bloody rifle from the doorway. He aimed quickly and fired, catching Brown in the stomach. Brown jerked and fell to the street, both hands holding his stomach.
Rogers leveled a pistol and fired, his bullet ricocheting off a support post, a chunk of lead striking Smoke’s left leg, dropping him to the boardwalk. Smoke ended Roger’s life with a single shot to his head.
White-hot pain lanced through Smoke’s side as Williams shot him from behind. Smoke toppled off the boards, turning as he fell. He fired twice, his bullets taking Williams in the neck, causing Williams’s head to twist at an unnatural angle.
Smoke scrambled painfully to his feet, grabbing a fallen scattergun with blood on the barrel. He checked the shotgun, then quickly examined his wounds. Bleeding, but not serious. Williams’s slug had gone through the fleshy part of his side. Using the point of his knife, Smoke picked out a tiny piece of lead from Rogers’s gun and tied a bandanna around the slight wound. He slipped farther into the darkness of the building as spurs jingled in an alley at the rear of the old store. Smoke thumbed back both hammers on the coach gun. He waited.
The spurs jingled once more. Smoke followed the sound with both barrels of the express gun. Carefully, silently, he slipped across the floor to a wall fronting the alley. He could hear heavy breathing somewhere in front of him.
He pulled both triggers, the charge blowing a bucket-sized hole in the weathered plank wall.
The gunslick was blown across the alley, hurled against an outhouse. The outhouse collapsed, while the gunhand fell into a pit where the outhouse had been.
Silently, Smoke reloaded the shotgun, then reloaded his own .44s and the ones taken from the dead gunman. He listened as Fenerty called for help from his companions.
There was no reply.
Fenerty was the last gunhawk left.
Smoke located the voice, just across the road in a decaying building. Laying aside the shotgun, he picked up a rifle and emptied its magazine into the storefront, explosions ending a brief moment of silence. Fenerty came staggering out, shot in chest and belly. He died facedown in a corpse-littered street.
“All right, you bastards!” Smoke yelled to Richards, Potter, and Stratton. “Holster your guns and step out where I can see you. Face me, if you’ve got the guts.”
The sharp odor of sweat mingling with blood and gunsmoke filled the still summer air as four men walked out into the sunshine.
Richards, Potter, and Stratton stood at one end of the town. A tall, blood-smeared figure stood at the other. All their guns were in leather.
“You son of a bitch!” Stratton screamed, his voice as high-pitched as a woman’s. “You ruined it all.” He clawed for his .44.
Smoke drew and fired before Stratton’s pistol could clear leather. Potter grabbed for his Colt. Smoke shot him dead, gunshots echoing off empty buildings, then he holstered his gun, waiting.
Richards had not moved. He stood with a faint smile on his lips, staring at Smoke.
“You ready to die?” Smoke asked, a sardonic grin creasing his face.
“As ready as I’ll ever be, I reckon,” Richards replied. There was no fear in his voice. His hands appeared steady. “Janey gone?”
“Took your money and pulled out.”
“Been a long run, hasn’t it, Jensen?”
“It’s just about over now.”
“What happens to all our holdings?”
“I don’t care what happens to the mines. The miners can have them. I’m giving all your stock to decent, hardworking punchers and homesteaders. They’ve earned it.”
A puzzled look spread over Richards’s face. “I don’t understand. You did ... all this,” he waved his hand, “for nothing?”
Someone moaned, the sound coming from up the street.
“I did it for my pa, my brother, my wife, and my baby son.”
“But it won’t bring them back!”
“I know.”
“I wish I’d never heard the name Jensen.”
“You’ll never hear it again after this day, Richards.”
“One way to find out,” Richards said with a smile. He drew his Colt and fired. He was snake-quick, but hurried his shot, lead digging up dirt at Smoke’s feet.
Smoke shot him in the right shoulder, spinning the gunman around. Richards grabbed for his lefthand gun and Smoke fired again, his slug striking Richards in the left side of his chest. He struggled to bring up his Colt. He managed to cock it before Smoke’s third shot struck him in his belly. Richards sat down hard in the bloody dirt. He toppled over on his side and died instantly.
Smoke looked up at the ridge where the mountain men were gathered.
They were leaving as silently as the wind.8
* * *
Puma finished his cigar at the same time he finished his story. He flicked it into the fire and stared silently at the flames, remembering his old friends and their last battle.
A voice called from the edge of the forest, startling the three men. “You boys believe anything that old coot has to say and you’ll be sorry.”
Smoke grinned and walked into the clearing, a Colt in each fist hanging at his side. “I heard you had company, Puma, so I slipped up here to see if they were friendly.”
Cal and Pearlie both jumped to their feet and slapped Smoke on the back and shoulders. “Boy are we glad to see you, Smoke. We came up here lookin’ for ya’, to see if we could help out against Sundance and his gang,” blurted Cal in a rush of words.
Smoke raised one eyebrow. “Uh-huh, and you end up listening to that old coot over there, the ugliest living mountain man in all Colorado Territory, tell you some of his lies.”
Puma frowned. “Weren’t no lies, Smoke Jensen.” He paused and grinned at his friend. “Leastways, not too many anyway.”
Smoke threw his arm around Puma’s shoulder and said to his punchers, “Boys, would you run up that trail, just over the next ridge, and fetch me the buckboard I left back yonder?”
/> As Cal and Pearlie turned to go, Smoke added, “Oh, and be careful, it’s got a couple of women in it who’ve had a hard time.”
* * *
After the Aldritch women were brought to Puma’s cabin and were given some venison and coffee, Smoke asked Pearlie if he would escort them down to Big Rock to see Doc Spalding.
Pearlie raised his eyebrows. “What about Cal?”
“I reckon be can stay up here for a while. Maybe Puma can teach him some trail-craft while I set my traps and prepare for the arrival of Sundance and his gang.”
“But Smoke,” Pearlie said, obviously not wanting to leave his friends.
Smoke held up his hand. “No buts, Pearlie. You know Cal can’t manage that buckboard by himself, and you can. Now, the sooner you get gone, the sooner you can get back up here.” He paused, then said, “I wouldn’t want you to miss all the excitement.”
Pearlie grinned. “Yes sir, Smoke. I’m on my way already.”
Both the Aldritch women thanked Smoke, causing him to blush mightily. “You tell Doc Spalding to give you anything you need,” he called to them, as Pearlie drove the wagon away.
Puma shook his head and spit into the campfire. “I ain’t never had so much company at one time in all my born days. It’s gettin’ too damned crowded around here.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sundance Morgan reined in his mount and sat with his palms resting on his saddle horn, staring ahead through the heat waves and dust devils on the trail, thinking about what lay before him. His gang pulled their horses to a halt and they gathered around him. The animals’ sides heaved and they shook sweat from their necks, exhausted from the ride. El Gato took a long pull from his canteen, wiped his moustache with the back of his hand, and asked, “Señor Sundance, why we stop?”
Sundance removed his hat and sleeved trail dust and sweat off his forehead. “Just over that next ridge is the town of Big Rock. I’m decidin’ how we should handle it.”
Perro Muerte grinned, his brass tooth gleaming in the sunlight. He pulled a Colt from his holster and held it up, barrel pointed at the sky. “This be one way. It sure to get their attention.”
Vengeance of the Mountain Man Page 17
