Law of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Walt and Alice offered their congratulations to Doreen and then Walt glanced at Smoke. Smoke nodded his head. The old rancher and his wife slipped unnoticed out the front door and climbed into their buggy, heading back toward Box T range.

  In pairs, the farmers and their wives began slipping out of the mansion. At a quarter to the hour, all those who were on Smoke’s side had left. Smoke found Rusty.

  “Start staying close to the Pecos Kid, Rusty. When I make my move, you grab his guns and watch my back.”

  The cowboy nodded and moved off into the milling crowds.

  The band was doing their best to play a tune that Smoke could but vaguely recognize. Sounded to him like they were all in different keys.

  Smoke moved over to a table near the hallway where the grandfather clock was located and took a glass of champagne just as the chimes donged out seven o’clock. He finished the glass then walked up to Jud and Doreen, jerked both Jud’s guns out of leather and placed the muzzle of one in the man’s ear. Jud’s bodyguards froze, not knowing what to do.

  The band stopped playing; the milling crowds were still as the word spread throughout the ground floor of the mansion.

  Rusty had clobbered the Pecos Kid with a silver platter of fried chicken and grabbed his guns. The Kid lay on the floor, his head on a pile of chicken.

  Smoke said, “Tell your men to start tossing their guns out the windows, Jud. If just one of them tries anything, I’ll kill you where you stand.”

  “See that they do it, Jason,” Jud managed the words out of his fricasseed brain and past his anger.

  Six guns began sailing out the open windows.

  “Get horses out front for Doreen and King Vale,” Smoke ordered.

  Jason nodded at one of the bodyguards.

  “Make your speech, Doreen,” Smoke told her.

  Doreen spun around to face the crowd. “Jud Vale kidnapped me and brought me here against my will. I’ve been a prisoner in this house.” She looked straight at Sheriff Brady. “Do you hear me, Sheriff?”

  “I hear you, girl.”

  “I hate this man,” Doreen said, pointing to Jud. “I would sooner marry a grizzly bear. I planned this whole party so’s Smoke and the man I really love, Rusty, would come and rescue me.”

  Rusty was grinning and blushing. He looked like a lit railroad lantern.

  “I’m ashamed of you people!” Doreen yelled at the crowd of men and women. “Not a one of you would help Walt and Alice or Smoke and Rusty stand up to this nitwit!” She glared at Jud, standing with his crown tilted to one side of his big head. “To hell with you all!” Doreen shouted.

  “Let’s go!” Smoke said, shoving Jud toward the door.

  Outside, Doreen hiked up her expensive gown and showed Rusty bare legs as she stepped into the stirrup and mounted up. The cowboy did his best to look away, but the sight was just too tempting. One eye was going one way and the other was on a shapely leg.

  “Settle down, Rusty,” Doreen whispered. “Your time is coming. I promise.”

  “Have mercy!” Rusty said.

  Smoke prodded Jud into the saddle. Jud hiked up his robe and showed some leg, too; but it was definitely not a scintillating experience for anyone. Especially the horse, who swung his head and tried to figure out what it was on his back.

  Smoke stepped into the saddle. “Jud dies if anyone follows,” he warned the crowd. “Tell them, King Vale,” Smoke said sarcastically.

  Some lucidity had returned to Jud. Having the muzzle of a .44 laid against one’s ear can do that. He twisted in the saddle. “Stay back. Our time will come. Just stay back.”

  “Let’s go, King,” Smoke said. “Your royal procession is about to parade.”

  The Pecos Kid woke up with a chicken leg stuck in one ear, wondering why the band had stopped playing.

  22

  “You’ll die hard for this,” Jud warned them all, as they clip-clopped along, Jud’s crown bouncing from one side of his head to the other. “Especially you, Doreen. I’ll turn you over to my men and let them have their way with you. And that’s a promise.”

  Doreen turned in the saddle, balled her right hand into a fist, and busted Jud square on the nose. His crown flew off his head as the blood began to trickle, leaking down into his beard.

  “You can pick your crown up on the way back,” Smoke told him. Jud cursed them all.

  Smoke turned at the sounds of a single horse coming up fast behind them. It was the young reporter from the paper at Montpelier.

  “I’m on my way to get this story written,” he shouted at them. “I’ll see that this is printed all over the state.”

  He galloped on past and then cut north, toward the town.

  “He’s dead, too,” Jud growled.

  “Give it up, Jud,” Smoke advised the man. “Send your gun hands packing, break up your outlaw gangs, and settle down.”

  Jud mouthed a few choice words at Smoke, none of them the least bit complimentary.

  Smoke rode on for another mile and then twisted in the saddle and knocked Jud sprawling, on his butt, in the road. Smoke grabbed the reins of the riderless horse and shouted, “Let’s go, people!”

  Jud sat in the dirt and squalled at them, shaking his fists and cussing.

  “They’ll be coming after us now!” Doreen yelled over the pounding of hooves.

  “We’ll make the crick,” Rusty told her.

  Jud jumped to his feet and began loping up the road, back to his ranch. He reached the spot where his crown lay in the dust, the jewels twinkling under the starry light. Jud plopped his crown back on his head and stomped on, his anger and hate growing with each dusty step. A mile farther on, he met a large force of his men, hanging back a couple of miles.

  “They’re heading for the creek!” Jud shouted, pointing. “Get them. Kill them! Kill them all.”

  Jason rode up, leading a horse. “I figured they’d set you afoot, Boss.” He handed Jud a brace of six guns.

  Jud swung into the saddle. “Somebody give me apiece of rawhide,” he ordered.

  A piece of thin rawhide was found and handed him.

  Jud made a chinstrap for his crown, tying it tightly under his square jaw. He rode to the head of the group and paused, looking back. At least sixty riders. He lifted his hand into the air. “Forward!” he shouted. “Slay the infidels!”

  “What the hell’s an in-fidel?” Gimpy asked.

  “Beats me,” Jake Hube told him. “Must be something like a Injun, maybe.”

  The riders surged forward, with King Vale in the lead waving a six gun and shouting curses.

  But many of the smarter gunfighters had either stayed back at the ranch or were bringing up the rear of the force. They were too wise in the ways of Smoke Jensen to think Smoke would not have a backup plan in Doreen’s escape. Probably he had set up an ambush.

  John Wills, who had been wrapped up in poison ivy by Smoke, and his buddies, Dave and Shorty and Lefty, trailed a good mile behind the main force. Jaeger and Chato Di Peso and Hammer, along with Blackjack and Highpockets and DePaul and about a dozen others had not even left the ranch area. They sat on the long front porch of the mansion, eating fried chicken dunked in caviar and drinking champagne. All of them had a very strong hunch that many of those chasing after Smoke this starry night would not come back at all. The rest would come straggling back in, all shot to hell and gone.

  But that would be all right with them. They were professionals in this business, and hardened to the ways of their chosen profession. This night would probably see the end of many of the punks and two-bit gunslingers who had hired on, looking for a cheap and fast buck and a few quick thrills to take back home and boast about. What they would get is a shallow grave. If they were lucky.

  The crowds had quickly departed after Smoke had made his move. All but the bugler; he was now drunk as a cooler and blowing cavalry calls into the night. Some of the gunslingers had dumped him, bugle and all, into a horse trough. But that had only slowed him down for a few m
oments. He had shaken the water out of his bugle and kept right on tooting.

  Jaeger spread some caviar on a cracker and nibbled. “Only ting de damn Russians ever did dat vas any gut was make caviar,” he growled.

  “What’s this stuff made of anyways?” Pike asked.

  “Vish eggs.”

  “What the hell’s a vish?” Highpockets paused in the lifting of a caviar-spread cracker to his mouth.

  “A vish is a vish. Swim in wassar.”

  About half of the men threw the caviar to the porch floor and stayed with the fried chicken.

  “Here they come,” Jackson announced.

  Smoke, Rusty, and Doreen had just made the creek in time to dismount and take positions. Alice and Doreen had told Walt and the others they were staying and to shut up about it. They had taken rifles and squatted down behind logs with the other farmer women.

  Matthew stood by a cottonwood, Cheyenne’s long-barreled Colt in his right hand. The boy was calm as death, and his hand was steady.

  Smoke earred back the hammer on his Winchester; he heard the sounds of others doing the same. As the charging riders came into range, Smoke lifted his rifle and took aim at Jud’s crown. He squeezed off a round and drilled the arch of the crown, blowing off the arms and the dangling pearls.

  “Huugghh!” Jud croaked, as the chin strap momentarily lighted, cutting off air due to the force of the impacting slug.

  Those on the Box T side of the creek began filling the night air with hot lead. The first volley cleared half a dozen saddles and wounded that many more.

  Spooked horses began bucking and jumping, sending another half-dozen riders to the hard ground. One gunslinger, afoot, his hands filled with Colts, tried to ford the creek. Young Matt took careful aim and squeezed the trigger, dead-centering the man, putting the slug right between his eyes. The gunny pitched face-forward into the creek.

  Rusty shot the punk Glen Regan just as the kid was turning. The rifle slug went right through both cheeks of Glen’s buttocks. Glen dropped squalling and crying to the creek bank, losing his guns, both hands holding onto his injured backside.

  “Fall back, men!” Jud yelled. “Regroup but don’t lose courage. They are but riffraff and swine who face us. You have the power of royalty on your side.”

  Jackson put another dent in Jud’s crown, knocking it down to one side of the man’s head, giving the man a thunderous headache. Jud’s horse spooked and tossed him into a thorn bush and royalty’s bare legs and backside took the full brunt of long thorns.

  “Yowee!” Jud hollered, jumping to his feet. Holding his ermine robe waist high, he beat a hasty retreat up the bank and jumped over the crest.

  “Let’s get gone from here!” Cisco Webster shouted, just as Walt put a slug into the man’s saddlehorn, tearing the horn from the saddle and knocking it spinning. Cisco’s horse panicked and went snorting and racing into the night. Unfortunately for Cisco, the horse stampeded the wrong way, taking him right across the creek. “Whoa, goddammit!” Cisco yelled.

  Rusty reversed his Winchester and knocked Cisco slap out of the saddle, the butt of the rifle catching the man on the jaw. Cisco was unconscious before he hit the ground, landing amid what was left of his broken teeth.

  The fight was gone from Jud and his men. Jud screamed in pain as he was lifted into a saddle. He was still yelling and cussing and waving his arms as what was left of his army rode back toward the mansion.

  The night fell quiet, broken only by the moaning of the wounded.

  “What do we do with them?” Alice asked, listening to the pleadings for help.

  “Leave them!” Chester’s wife said, bitterness making her voice hard. “Would they help us if the situation was the other way around?”

  Smoke booted his Winchester and swung into the saddle. He turned his horse’s head toward the Box Tranch house and his back to the wounded bounty hunters.

  That ended any further discussion as to the fate of those who chose to take fighting wages from Jud Vale.

  Smoke stepped out of his room the next morning and stood in the pre-dawn quiet, drinking his first cup of coffee. He had an odd feeling, a premonition, that matters would be coming to a head very soon. Why that jumped into his mind, he didn’t know—only that he felt it to be true.

  Jackson walked out of the bunkhouse, a mug of coffee in his hand. He joined Smoke on the bench by the side of the barn and built him a cigarette, passing the makings to Smoke.

  “I got a funny feelin’,” Jackson said. “Come on me sudden-like; woke me up.”

  “That Jud Vale is going to bring this war to a head real soon?”

  “Huh? You been readin’ my mind. Yeah. Reckon why we both come up with that?”

  “We’ve made a fool out of him too many times, Jackson. Last night was probably that much-talked about straw that broke the camel’s back. Now he knows that peole are laughing at him. With his ego, he won’t be able to tolerate that. He’ll have to do something to reinstill the fear that people once had for him.”

  “By killing us.” Jackson’s words were offered in a flat tone.

  “That’s it. Or part of it, at least.” “He ain’t gonna get it done.”

  “I believe that. I just don’t want to see the women or the kids get hurt.”

  They drank coffee and smoked their cigarettes in silence for a time. “What are you gonna do when this mess is over?” Jackson asked.

  “Head south. My wife and kids are down in Arizona. The youngest took a lung infection. Had to go there for health reasons. You?”

  Jackson took a moment before replying. “Walt’s asked me to stay on. Says he’ll give me a working interest in the ranch if I do. And … well, me and Susie been eyeballin’ each other. I might do it. I backed into gunfightin’ like a lot of other men. Never set out to hunt me no reputation. It just come on me. One day I looked up—I’d been punchin’ cows for a man over in Nevada Territory—and these two men ’bout my age come into the saloon where I was havin’ a beer and braced me. Said they was gonna kill me. I asked them why? They said ’cause of who I was. Surprised the hell out of me that I was anyone special. They grabbed for iron and I was faster. The boss said he didn’t want no gun slicks on his payroll and paid me off the next day. I drifted. Hooked up with some men headin’ for Utah to draw fightin’ wages. I reckon the rest is history.”

  Rusty had walked up, to stand quietly and listen. When Jackson fell silent, Rusty said, “You ought to stay, Jackson. Me and Doreen is gonna get hitched up soon as the trouble is over. The ranch is damn sure big enough for the both of us.”

  “I been thinkin’ on it for sure.”

  “Light’s on in the kitchen,” Smoke said. “Breakfast pretty soon.”

  “Dolittle’s up. He’ll wake the boys,” Rusty told him. “What’s up for today?”

  “Going over every inch of this ranch compound and making sure we can stand off a heavy attack. It’s got to come. Jackson, I want you to take some of the boys and start clearing off all the brush from the hills and ridges around this place. Make damn sure we can’t be burnt out. That’ll also cut down on the risk of any riflemen slipping in on us.”

  “Good move,” Jackson agreed.

  “I’m hungry,” Rusty said, one eye on the light coming from the kitchen window.

  “I’ve never seen you when you weren’t,” Smoke said with a smile. “When you and Doreen get married, you best plant a big garden.”

  “You do know how to use a hoe, don’t you?” Jackson kidded him.

  “I ’spect, the way you and Susie is calf-eyin’ each other, you’ll be hoein’ right along ’side me,” Rusty fired back.

  Jackson laughed. “Yeah, if it all works out. Be a welcome relief from gunfightin’.”

  “Don’t ever pack those guns too far out of sight, Jackson,” Smoke warned him. “It doesn’t work. I know. I changed my name and dried it for a lime. You’ll always have to keep a sharp eye on your backtrail.”

  “I know,” Jackson’s words came aft
er a sigh. “But I do wish that some of us could get that message through to young Matt.”

  “Could anybody tell you anything when you were his age?”

  Jackson smiled ruefully. “Nope. I heard all the words, but they never sunk in.”

  “Matt will have to find his own way,” Smoke said, standing up from the bench. “Just like we did. But I think Old Cheyenne—in the time he had to spend with him— taught Matt a thing or two.”

  “Walt is talkin’ about hirin’ the boy on as a full-time puncher,” Rusty said. “Matt says he’s through with schoolin’.”

  “That’s a good idea. I imagine Matt will stay for a year or two. Then he’ll get ants in his pants and drift. All we can do is wish him well.”

  Rusty looked toward the ranch house and the lighted kitchen window. “Damn, I’m hungry!”

  23

  Jud Vale lay on his belly in bed, while a doctor from Montpelier probed and dug and pulled out thorns, some of them more than three inches long. Jud hollered and squalled and carried on all through the procedure.

  But the pain seemed to have done one thing: it had cleared Jud’s mind, at least for the moment. His ermine robe and crown had been tossed to the floor. He was still as nutty as a pecan pie but some lucidity had crept through the madness.

  Through the open window of his bedroom, Jud could see men digging graves to bury the recent dead. He cursed Smoke Jensen, his brother, his bastard son, and everyone else he could think of.

  Especially Doreen. He cussed Doreen for playing him for a fool until he was breathless. Long after the doctor had left, doing his best to hide a grin, Jud was still cussing.

  Jason came to his room and waited until his boss and long-time partner in murder, rape, and robbery had calmed down some. “What do you want me to do with them royal duds and that bent crown?”

  “Put them in the closet. I might decide to wear them again.”

  “Jesus, I hope not!”

  “I lost it for a while, didn’t I, Jas?”

  “You were off your trolley for a fact. I thought I was going to have to shoot you there for a time. You was becomin’ unbearable.”