Smoke grinned, but his eyes held no warmth. “Yeah, the man left alive at the end is the winner.”
“Just the way I like it. Say good-bye to your friend, mountain man.”
The two men circled slowly, bobbing and weaving and throwing an occasional feint to test their opponent’s reflexes. Lightning Jack suddenly rushed at Smoke swinging roundhouse blows with both arms. Smoke ducked his chin into his chest, hunched his shoulders, and took two heavy blows on his arms. He grunted with pain, and thought, This man can hit like a mule! As Jack drew back to swing again, Smoke unloaded two short, sharp left jabs, both landing on Jack’s nose, flattening it, snapping his head back hard enough so that Puma could hear his neck crack.
Jack shook his head, flinging blood and snot in the air, a dazed look on his face. Smoke stood, spread-eagled, his fists in front of him, waiting patiently.
After a pause Jack sleeved blood off his lip and felt his flattened nose. He glared at Smoke, hate in his eyes. Growling like an animal, he advanced toward the mountain man, pumping his arms while swinging his fists.
Smoke stepped lightly to one side and swung a left cross against Jack’s chin, stopping him in his tracks. Smoke followed with a straight right to the middle of his chest, knocking him backward, rocking him back on his heels. Another left jab to the forehead to straighten him up, and then a mighty uppercut to his solar plexus, just under his sternum, lifted him up on his toes before he fell to one knee. Jack remained there a few moments, catching his breath.
He looked up at Smoke, blood pouring from his ruined nose. He grinned wickedly, then snatched a slender knife from his boot and rushed at Smoke with the blade extended.
Smoke took the blade in the outer part of his left shoulder, bent to his right, and swung with all his might. His fist hit Jack in the throat, crushing his larynx with a sharp, crunching sound. The knife slipped from Jack’s numb fingers and he fell to his knees, grabbing his neck with both hands. A loud, whistling wheeze came from his mouth as he tried to pull air in through his broken trachea, and his eyes widened, bugging out like a frightened frog. His skin turned dusky blue, then black as he ran out of air. His eyes glazed over and he died, falling on his face in the dirt.
Smoke took the knife handle in his right hand, closed his eyes and set his jaw, and yanked it free with a jerk. He staggered at the pain, then straightened, a steely glint in his eye as blood seeped from the wound to stain his shirt.
Puma started toward him, but Smoke waved him away. “Not yet, Puma. We got one more snake to stomp ’fore we’re through.”
Sundance stuttered, “But I’m not much good with my fists. I ain’t no prizefighter.”
“You fancy yourself a gunfighter?”
“Yeah, and I’m a hell of a lot better’n I was last time you bushwhacked me, Jensen. I been practicing for years.”
Smoke, his left arm hanging limp at his side, bent down and picked up belt and holsters. “Buckle this on for me, would you, Puma?”
Puma placed the guns around Smoke’s waist and snapped the buckle shut, then tied the right-hand holster down low on his thigh. Smoke slipped the hammer-thongs off both guns, using his right hand, stepping over to the center of the plateau. “Give the lowlife his pistols, Puma, then watch your back. Sundance is famous for shooting people from the north when they’re facing south.”
Sundance put his hand on the handle of his Colt. “You’re gonna die for that, Jensen.”
The two men squared off, thirty yards apart, hands hanging loose, fingers flexing in anticipation. “You called this play, Sundance. Now it’s time for you to pay the band. Fill your damn hand!”
Sundance snarled and grabbed for his pistol, crouching and turning slightly sideways to give Smoke less of a target. Smoke waited a second, giving the gunfighter time to get his gun halfway out of his holster. In a move that was so fast Puma blinked and missed it, Smoke cleared leather and fired. His bullet took Sundance in the right wrist, snapping it, flinging his Colt into the dirt.
Sundance howled, cradling his right hand with his left, hunched over, tears running down his cheeks. “Okay, you bastard. You win,” he sobbed.
Smoke shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. You’ve got another gun and another hand. Use ’em.”
Sundance looked up in astonishment. “My left hand against your right? That ain’t fair!”
Smoke shook his head, twirled his right-hand Colt once, and then settled it in his holster. “I’ll cross-draw my left gun, if that’s more to your liking.”
Sundance’s lips curled in a tight smile. The cross-draw wasn’t a speed draw. No one could beat him with a cross-draw, even left-handed, he thought. “Okay. It’s your call, Jensen.”
He stood up, threw his shoulders back, and went for his iron.
Smoke’s right hand flashed across his belly, drawing and firing again before Sundance could fist his weapon. This time, Smoke’s slug took the outlaw in his left shoulder, shattering it while spinning him around to land facedown on the ground.
Smoke looked at Puma. “Bring me a rope from that bag over yonder.”
He took the rope from Puma, formed a large loop, and passed it over Sundance’s arms to tie it around his chest. He dragged the sobbing, sniffling gunman across the plateau to the edge of the cliff on the east side of the clearing.
“Help me lower him down onto that ledge down there, Puma.”
“What . . . what are you doing? No . . . no . . . please . . .” The two mountain men lowered the crying outlaw twenty feet down the side of the sheer cliff, letting him down gently on a three-foot ledge that stuck out over a drop of two hundred feet.
Smoke leaned over the edge and called down. “I’m gonna do something for you that you never did for your victims, Sundance. I’m gonna give you a choice of the way you want to die. You can lay there on that ledge and slowly starve to death, or you can jump and fall two hundred feet so you’ll die quick. It’s all up to you.”
“Wait, you can’t do this to me. It ain’t right . . .”
Smoke and Puma slowly walked away, ignoring cries from the coward below. Neither one much cared how he chose to die, just so long as he died, and that was a certainty.
“You want me to fix up that there shoulder?” Puma Buck asked as they reached the horses.
“Naw,” Smoke replied. “Just get me home to Sally. She’s a lot more gentle than you are, you old grizzly.”
Puma smiled. “Yeah, Lord knows we don’t want nobody to treat you rough, Smoke Jensen.”9
* * *
Tilghman shook his head. “Smoke, that makes my little fracas seem like a Sunday school outin’.”
Smoke shrugged. “Bill, things were a lot different back then, and especially up in the high lonesome. The only rules were there were no rules.”
30
When the train pulled into the station at Houston, Smoke’s group exited and got their baggage from the baggage car.
“What now?” Tilghman asked. “Do we head for Galveston right away?”
Smoke glanced at Sally, who was stretching and trying to get the kinks out caused by two days on a rough-riding railroad car.
“If it’s all the same to you, Marshal, I think we could all do with some good cooking and a night in a fine hotel,” he said.
Sally grinned in relief. “Yes, please. One with a hot bath and a soft feather mattress.”
Tilghman grinned. “I guess another day won’t make much difference. I hear it’s almost fifty miles to Galveston, and to tell you the truth, I don’t hanker to spend another couple of days in a stagecoach right now.”
They went to the biggest hotel they could find, one called the Capitol Hotel. The proprietor told them the beautiful building had once been the capitol building of Texas, until the government was moved to Austin.
“All I want to know,” Sally said, “is do you have a bath with hot water?”
The desk clerk looked offended. “But of course, madam. The Capitol has all the modern conveniences, as well as a first-
rate dining room.”
Pearlie’s ears picked up at the mention of a dining room. “Forget about the bath, just show me where the grub is,” he said with relish.
Sally gave him a stern look. “Pearlie, if you plan to eat with us, you will take a bath first. After all,” she said, a look of mock earnestness on her face, “cleanliness is next to godliness.”
“Yeah, but starvation isn’t,” Pearlie moaned, picking his bags up and trudging up the stairs while the others laughed at his woebegone expression.
* * *
The next morning, after all were well rested and well fed, Smoke hired a special stage just for them for the two-day journey to Galveston.
As they boarded the stage, the station master warned, “Y’all be careful now. There’s been reports of Mexican bandidos stoppin’ some of the coaches.”
“I don’t believe we have to worry about that,” Smoke said with a grin. “We have the famous U.S. Deputy Marshal Bill Tilghman with us.”
The stationmaster frowned and leaned over to spit tobacco juice in the dirt. “Yeah, well, I’m sure the mexicanos will be impressed when they shoot you full of holes.”
* * *
As they bounced and rumbled over the trail from Houston toward Galveston, Sally noticed the sparkling gold badge Tilghman had pinned on his shirt under his vest.
“That’s a very interesting badge you have there, Mr. Tilghman,” she said. “It looks almost as if it’s made of gold.”
“It is,” Tilghman answered shortly.
“Man,” Monte observed, “I’ve gotta get me a job with the U.S. Marshals Service if they’re givin’ out badges made of gold now.”
Tilghman laughed. “No, Monte. It didn’t come with the job. Back when I was first appointed, a group of my friends had a blacksmith hammer this one out of two twenty-dollar gold pieces. It’s a bit gaudy for my taste, but”—he shrugged—“what could I do? I didn’t want to insult my friends.”
“They must’ve really appreciated what you were doin’ for them,” Cal said from the seat opposite.
Tilghman shook his head. “Let me tell you something about law enforcement, Cal. The average citizen appreciates what you’re doin’ for him only so long as it doesn’t inconvenience him in any way. But as soon as you tell him he can’t walk his horse on a boardwalk or carry a gun inside the town limits, suddenly you’re not so popular anymore.”
Smoke was about to add he’d lost a lot of so-called good friends when they found out he was a gunfighter, but he was interrupted by the sound of distant shots and the driver yelling “Whoa” to the horses pulling the stage.
Pearlie leaned his head out the window, his hand holding his hat to keep it from blowing off. He ducked back inside, his hand going for the butt of his pistol.
“Uh-oh,” he said, looking from man to man in the coach, “looks like trouble up ahead.”
“What is it?” Smoke asked, unhooking the rawhide thongs on his twin Colts as the other men did the same.
“Looks like about ten or fifteen men on horseback in the middle of the road ahead, just sittin’ there with rifle butts restin’ on their thighs.”
Sally pulled her purse around, opened it, and withdrew her short-barreled .32 Smith and Wesson. She arranged her frock coat to cover it as she stuck it in the waistband of her dress.
When the stage ground to a halt, the brake making a high-pitched squealing sound as it slowed the steel-rimmed wheels to a stop, everyone piled out of the stage, looking ahead at the group of men sitting on their horses in front of the team pulling the stage.
The driver already had his hands above his head.
“We ain’t carryin’ no gold,” he called to the man at the front of the pack, the evident leader.
He was a broad-shouldered Mexican, squat bordering on fat, Mexican with crossed bandoliers of shotgun shells on his chest and a sawed-off Greener in his hands.
“Buenos dias, señores e señoritas,” he said, pulling his large Mexican sombrero off and sweeping it before him in an elaborate bow. “I am El Gato,” he added, then said in English, “That means mountain cat.”
“We understand Mex,” Tilghman said, his voice hard and unfriendly. “What do you want?”
“Why, nothing much, señor. My compadres and me,” he said, sweeping his arms out to point at the men riding with him, “are poor vaqueros, who want nothing more than a few pesos to feed our hungry children.”
As he spoke, Monte, Louis, Smoke, Cal, and Pearlie slowly edged sideways to be away from Sally so when the shooting started, as they all knew it would, she wouldn’t be in the direct line of fire.
“You men will get nothing from us,” Tilghman said, letting his hands move closer to his pistols.
“Aw, señor, that is most unfriendly,” El Gato said, opening his mouth in a wide grin, exposing blackened stubs of teeth.
“Where are you from, mister?” Tilghman asked.
“Just across the border, señor, a place called Piedras Negras. Why do you ask?”
“I just wondered if they didn’t have dentists where you come from,” Tilghman said, trying to goad the man into action.
The smile faded from El Gato’s face. “As I said,” he went on, twisting in his saddle to look around at his men, “the señor is not being friendly.”
“You’ve got five seconds to get out of the way an’ let this stage proceed,” Tilghman said, moving his vest so El Gato could see the golden badge. “I’m a U.S. marshal, an’ I’m orderin’ you out of the way.”
El Gato’s voice became harsh and he frowned as he leaned over the saddle horn. “You do not order El Gato,” he growled. “Can you not see I have fifteen men to your six?”
“I know the odds aren’t fair,” Tilghman replied scornfully, “but we just don’t have time for you to go an’ get more men.”
El Gato’s eyes widened in amazement and he started to lower the barrel of his shotgun.
Smoke’s group all drew at one time, with Louis’s and Tilghman’s pistols firing a split second after Smoke’s, and Cal and Pearlie’s a split second after theirs.
Smoke and Tilghman both aimed for El Gato, figuring without their leader, the other bandidos wouldn’t be as brave. El Gato took two slugs before he could aim his shotgun, one in the forehead and the other in the belly. He grunted as his head snapped back and he somersaulted over his horse’s rump to land face-down in the dirt of the road.
His men managed to get off two wild shots before the fusillade from Smoke’s friends tore into them, knocking them off their horses like a hurricane wind whipping through the coastal plains grasses.
Horses snorted and crow-hopped at the tremendous explosion of all the guns. Men yelled and screamed in pain, and still the guns kept firing.
Sally, only a second slower than the men, had her .32 in her hand and knocked two of the bandits out of their saddles before they could clear leather.
Monte got three men, Cal two, and Pearlie three within seconds of beginning the dance. Smoke and Tilghman whirled to the side and accounted for the rest.
As the giant cloud of gunsmoke and cordite slowly drifted away on the Texas breeze coming in from the Gulf of Mexico, bodies could be seen lying sprawled all over the landscape, some still moving in pain or trying to crawl away on hands and knees, dripping blood to mix with the dirt and form a scarlet mud that reeked of death.
“Should we finish them off, Marshal?” Pearlie asked.
Tilghman shook his head. “No, just take their weapons and scatter their horses. If the coyotes and wolves don’t finish them, the buzzards will.”
The stagecoach driver coughed and choked, and finally leaned over the side of the stage and vomited several times.
“What’s the matter?” Tilghman asked him, walking to the side of the coach. “You hit?”
When the purple-faced man could finally speak, he said, “Hell, no! When all the shootin’ started, I plumb swallowed my chaw of tobaccy. Damn near killed me!”
Tilghman laughed and walked over
to Smoke, who was making sure Sally was all right.
“Yes, dear,” she said, making a face. “But I ripped my dress pulling out my Smith and Wesson, and I didn’t pack my sewing kit.”
Smoke shook his head and turned to watch Cal and Pearlie and Monte move among the wounded men, picking up their guns and shooing their horses away.
Louis walked up to Smoke and Tilghman and grimaced. “Damn,” he said, a disgusted look on his face.
“What is it, Louis?” Smoke asked as Tilghman looked on.
“Now there are two men who are almost as fast on the draw as I am.”
Smoke chuckled, glancing at Tilghman. “Do you think we should just let him go on in his delusion?”
Tilghman smiled. “Sure, why not? I’ve always said, it’s not who’s the fastest on the draw that counts, it’s who puts his lead where it needs to go that counts most in a gunfight.”
“By the way, Marshal,” Smoke asked, “you mind telling me why you shot El Gato in the stomach instead of the chest or head?”
“We have a sayin’ in the Marshals Service, Smoke. Two in the belly an’ one in the head sure makes a man dead.”
He grinned. “I was just startin’ on the belly when you beat me to the draw an’ put one in his head.”
Smoke and Louis laughed.
“That’s pretty good, Marshal,” Louis said.
“And true too,” Smoke added. “I’ve seen men take so much lead they’d sink if they tried to swim, and still manage to get off a few rounds before they died.”
Tilghman nodded. “I made a deal with myself the day I went into bein’ a lawman. If I ever have to shoot, I’m gonna shoot till the job gets done. It’s the only way to survive.”
“Amen,” Monte said from behind him.
31
The stagecoach pulled up at a large dock, bustling with activity. Across the bay, dim outlines of Galveston Island could be seen through sea mist hanging low over the warm salt water. There were wagons lined up for the ferry carrying all manner of agricultural goods, but most prevalent were the many bales of cotton, stacked one or two to a wagon.
Justice of the Mountain Man Page 20
