Matt Jensen, The Last Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Meeker and the one surviving bank robber had managed to dash out of the bank, and were now galloping away, the sound of their horses’ rapid hoofbeats permeating the town.

  The robber on the floor, bleeding from a bullet wound in his thigh, was Tate Casey.

  Within a matter of moments, several of the town’s citizens, having heard the commotion, charged into the bank. Seeing four dead men, one of whom was the teller, the townsmen grew incensed. They pointed to Casey.

  “He was one of them!”

  “Hang him!” someone shouted.

  “I’ll get a rope!” another yelled.

  “Hold it! Nobody is going to hang anybody!” the older of the two men who had fought the robbers off shouted.

  “Mister, you ain’t from here, so maybe you don’t know. But the teller them robbers killed was one of the best men in this town.”

  “Mr. Foster taught Sunday school!” another said of the teller.

  “I say we hang the bastard!”

  There was the deadly click of a pistol being cocked. “And I say that if anyone touches this man, I’ll kill him.”

  “What the hell, mister? Are you one of them?”

  “No!” the young woman shouted, pointing to the two armed customers. “These two men ran the robbers off.” She pointed to Casey. “And this man saved my life.”

  “Well, if we ain’t goin’ to hang this fella, what are we going to do with him?” someone said, pointing to Casey.

  “You aren’t going to do anything with him. He’s coming along with us,” the man with the gun said. Then, to Casey, he said, “Do you think you can sit a horse?”

  “I think so,” Casey answered.

  “Then let’s go.”

  The younger of the two men helped Casey to his feet, then, with Casey’s arm around his shoulder, started toward the door.

  “Hold it. You ain’t takin’ him out of here!”

  “Yes, we are,” the older of the two men said. “And if anyone sticks their head out the door to try and stop us, I’ll shoot them.”

  The two men helped Casey out of the bank and onto a horse; then the three of them rode away.

  Casey finished the story at the same time he finished with his cup of coffee. He wiped his coffee cup out, then hung it on a nail for future use.

  “Here I was, a stagecoach robber and a bank robber, yet those two men took me back to a cabin in the mountains,” he said. “And once we got there, why, the older one took the bullet out of my leg with all the skill of a surgeon. They tended me till I was nursed back to health.

  “I figured it was all over then. I figured they were going to find someplace to turn me in to the law for the reward, and to tell the truth, I wasn’t plannin’ on fightin’ ’em off. I’d had enough runnin’. I was ready to take my medicine.”

  “So did they turn you in?” Matt asked.

  Casey shook his head. “No, sir, they didn’t do nothin’ of the sort. What they done was make me promise to leave the outlaw trail. I told ’em that was just what I was plannin’ on doin’. So, they let me go, and I’ve been on the straight and narrow ever since.” The sheriff looked pointedly at Matt. “What I’ve just told you could ruin me,” he said. “The only person in town that knows about my past is my wife.”

  “I think everyone deserves a second chance,” Matt said. “Let me guess. The two men were Preacher and Smoke, right?”

  Casey nodded. “That’s them, all right.”

  “Have you ever wondered about the young woman? What may have happened to her?” Matt asked.

  Casey chuckled. “I don’t have to wonder what happened to her. Anytime I get curious, I just go home.”

  “Go home?”

  “Yep. I married her,” Casey said with a little chuckle. “I told you that the only one in town who knew about my past was my wife.”

  “That’s quite a story,” Matt said.

  Casey nodded. “And every word the gospel. All right, Matt, what is it you are wanting to know?”

  “I’m looking for the town of Gehenna. Have you ever heard of it?”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of it.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “Matt, are you sure you want to go there?”

  “Yeah, I do want to go there,” Matt insisted. “Do you know where it is?”

  “Yes, I know,” Casey answered. The sheriff walked over to the wall where a map of Colorado hung.

  “It’s right here,” he said. “On Tabequacha Creek.”

  “Thanks,” Matt said. “I might just be wasting my time, but right now it’s all I have to go on.”

  “You said you are looking for Clyde Payson, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Casey nodded. “Then that’s where you need to go. Payson may not be there now, but I know that he has been there. And that’s as good a place to start looking for him as any.”

  Matt felt a charge of excitement. This was the strongest lead he had gotten yet.

  “Thanks!” Matt said enthusiastically. He put his empty coffee cup down and started for the door. “And thanks for the coffee,” he called back.

  “Matt?”

  Matt stopped and looked back toward Casey. Casey was standing there with a worried expression on his face.

  “I don’t have to tell you that Payson is a killer, because you already know that,” Matt said. “But I’m not sure you fully understand just what sort of a person he really is. Don’t expect to just be able to call him out, because men like Payson don’t understand things like honor, or fair play.”

  “I know,” Matt said.

  “I’m sure you do,” Casey replied. “I just felt like I should tell you anyway.”

  “I appreciate it,” Matt said.

  As Matt swung into his saddle, then rode out of town, he thought about Casey’s story. Like Matt, Casey’s life had been immeasurably affected by Smoke Jensen. Smoke’s life had been influenced by Preacher, and Preacher’s own life had been shaped by the mountain men who had found him when he was but a boy himself.

  Contemplating that gave Matt a sense of continuity. He had lost one family when they were murdered by Payson and his associates. But now, in a very real sense, he felt that he was part of a new family, consisting of Preacher, Smoke, and indirectly, even Casey.

  It was a good feeling knowing that he was not alone in the world.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Bud and Fred Pease were brothers. Pug Cooper was their first cousin, and the three were on top of a mesa overlooking the trail by which anyone heading to Gehenna from Slick Rock would have to come. Bud and Fred were lying on their stomachs, keeping an eye on the trail below. Cooper was standing a few feet behind them, relieving himself.

  “Ha!” Cooper laughed.

  “What are you laughin’ at?” Bud asked.

  “I just pissed me a grasshopper offen that branch there,” Cooper said. “Knocked him clear across that rock.”

  “Get back over here and help us keep watch. If he comes through before dark, I don’t want to miss him,” Bud said.

  Cooper came back toward the edge of the mesa, still buttoning his pants.

  “What makes you think he’s comin’ anyway?” Cooper asked.

  “You heard ’im, same as me’n Fred did,” Bud replied. “He said he was lookin’ for Payson.”

  “So what if he is? It ain’t none of our concern,” Cooper said.

  “Yeah? Well, it won’t hurt to be gettin’ ourselves on Payson’s good side,” Bud said. “To say nothin’ of we’ll prob’ly get a reward for killin’ this fella.”

  “If he don’t come before nightfall, what’re we goin’ to do?” Cooper asked.

  “Yeah, Bud. If he don’t come before nightfall, what are we goin’ to do?” Fred repeated.

  “We ain’t got to worry none about that,” Bud answered. “Here he is a’comin’ now.”

  It was too far away to know who was sitting the horse, or even to be able to see the horse. The only thing Bud saw was the golden gle
am of a little feather of dust, glowing brightly in the setting sun. Bud didn’t need to see the horse or the rider. He knew that this was the man they were waiting for. Nobody else would be coming this way.

  “Get ready,” Bud said, jacking a round into the chamber of his rifle. “Whenever I give you the word, fire.”

  The other two jacked rounds into their rifles as well, then Cooper lay down and all three waited for the rider to come into range.

  Matt couldn’t see them, but he didn’t have to. He knew they were there, and he knew they were on top of the mesa. The problem was that the mesa was at least half a mile across, and they could be anywhere on top. There was no way he could get to them without putting himself in their line of fire.

  “Well, Spirit, if I can’t go to them, I’ll just bring them to me,” he said, reining to a stop.

  “What the hell is he doin’?” Cooper said. “Why don’t he come on?”

  “I don’t know, unless he knows we are here,” Bud said.

  “How could he know we are here? He doesn’t even know about us,” Fred said.

  Bud stroked his chin. “Some folks just know things,” he said.

  Cooper raised his rifle to his shoulder. “Well, I’m going to take a shot at him.”

  “No!” Bud said, pushing Cooper’s rifle down. “He’s way out of range. You’d just give us away if you shot at him now.”

  “What do you mean, give us away? I thought you said he already knew about us?”

  “He might know, and he might not,” Bud said. “But there’s no sense in just tellin’ him we are here.”

  “So, what are we going to do? Are we just going to ride on, or what?” Cooper asked.

  “I’ll be damn,” Bud said

  “What? What is it?”

  “He’s gathering firewood,” Bud said. “He’s going to camp there for the night.”

  “Why would he camp there?” Fred asked.

  “Why not? There’s a creek there. He has water, grass for his horse, dried wood for his fire.” Bud chuckled. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this in the first place.”

  “Think of what? Us camping there?”

  “No,” Bud said. “Us waiting until he camped.”

  After nightfall, Matt banked the fire so that it would continue to burn, pushing out a little bubble of golden light into the darkness. Then, finding a partial log that was about his size, he spread out his bedroll, draped a blanket over the log, put his hat at the top and his boots at the bottom. Stepping away from it, he looked at his handiwork. From as close as ten feet, it looked exactly like someone sleeping.

  That accomplished, Matt slipped away from his encampment, and slid down into a small depression. From there, he had a perfect view of the fire, and the dummy in the bedroll.

  He waited.

  It was at least an hour before he heard anything.

  “Damn it!” someone hissed.

  “Shut up! You want to give us away?” another voice said, also in a hiss.

  “I just stepped into a cactus, I’ve got needles in my leg.”

  “Leave ’em be.”

  “They hurt.”

  “Leave ’em be. Wait till we kill this son of a bitch, then you can take all the time you want to pull ’em out.”

  “Will you two shut up?”

  “Has he moved any?”

  “No, he’s still there, sleeping as sound as a log.”

  When Matt heard someone say he was sleeping as sound as a log, he had to bite his lip to keep from laughing out loud.

  The three men stepped into the bubble of light and looked down at the sleeping roll.

  “Hey, Bud, there’s something funny here,” Fred said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He ain’t movin’ or nothin’. Hell, he ain’t even breathin’.”

  “Don’t you boys know better than to come into a camp uninvited?” Matt said, standing then.

  “What the hell! Shoot! Shoot!” Bud shouted.

  Suddenly, the night was lit by muzzle flashes as the three men started shooting at Matt. The three men fanned their pistols, getting off several shots, though they were shooting wildly. Flashes of light continued to illuminate the night as the guns roared and bullets whistled through the darkness.

  Matt’s return fire was much more deliberate, one shot for each of his adversaries. One shot for each man was all it took, as all three of them went down with fatal bullet wounds. After making certain that all three were dead, Matt pulled them over to one side of the encampment; then he went to sleep.

  The next morning, in the light of day, Matt went through the pockets of each of the men. In the pocket of one of them, he found a pencil-drawn map. The map showed the location of the town of Gehenna, verifying the directions given him by Sheriff Casey.

  Matt buried the three of them in a shallow grave, backtracked their trail until he found their horses, hobbled on top of the mesa.

  “Well, here you are,” Matt said. He walked up to the three animals and patted them on the forehead. They seemed grateful for the attention, and nuzzled him.

  “It’s not your fault your owners were a bunch of no-count bastards,” he said as he untied the rope that was hobbling them. He gave the horses swats on their rumps, and all three took off running.

  Matt watched them gallop free. He knew that if they stayed in the wild, there was plenty of grass and water for them in the valley. If they wandered into a ranch somewhere, they would be well taken care of. Either way, he had done as much as he could for them. He walked over and rubbed Spirit behind the ear.

  “Don’t worry about them, Spirit,” Matt said. “They’ll be fine.”

  Spirit bobbed his head up and down as if he understood what Matt was telling him.

  Matt chuckled, then mounted Spirit to continue his journey, now bolstered by the fact that he had two separate sources that pointed to the same location.

  The town was small and flyblown, a dried-up cow plop in the middle of sagebrush and shimmering heat waves. What breeze there was was coming from the south and it felt as if it was coming from the furnace of a locomotive.

  Matt stopped to look at the sign, then smiled when he realized that, at long last, he had found the place he had been looking for.

  YOU ARE ENTERING

  GEHENNA

  Population Unknown

  THE LAW AIN’T WELCOME.

  IF YOU GOT NO BUSINESS HERE,

  GET OUT—OR GET SHOT

  As Matt rode down the street, he looked around at the town. There was only one street to the town, flanked on either side with a few leaning shacks that were thrown together from rough-hewn lumber, the unpainted wood turning gray and splitting. There was no railroad serving the town, no stagecoach service either. There were no signs of any kind to show that Gehenna was connected to the outside world. The little town may as well have been on the moon. It was a self-contained little community, inbred and festering.

  Matt looked at the buildings. There was a rooming house, a livery stable with a smithy’s shop to one side, a general store, and a saloon. He did not see any houses, nor was there a school, or a church. There was a saloon.

  As he passed the saloon, a woman stepped out on the porch, smiled, and waved at Matt. Matt was surprised to see that the woman was naked from the waist up.

  Although Matt had been in several towns throughout the West by now, he had never before been in a town like this. This town differed from all the others because he could see no signs of normal, domestic life here. In addition, the only women he saw were soiled doves, and they moved up and down the street freely, garishly made-up and outlandishly dressed, or in some cases, like the woman he had seen in front of the saloon, nearly undressed. He saw more than one bare breast over the course of his traverse through town.

  Without commerce, most towns would be sleepy, almost deserted during the day, coming alive only at night. But though it was only mid-afternoon, Matt could already hear the sounds of revelry. There was only one saloon, b
ut it was more than loud enough to make up for the fact that it stood all alone.

  And the sounds were different, not only louder, but more out of control. There was no music, but there were screams, shouts, raucous laughter, and gunfire. Matt didn’t know whether the gunshots were being fired in anger, or were part of the overall boisterous condition that prevailed.

  The saloon in Gehenna had no name.

  “What the hell does it need a name for?” Willie Simpson replied every time he was asked why. “The only thing you need to know is that you can get whiskey and beer here and, seeing as this is the only saloon in town, then it doesn’t need a name.”

  Willie Simpson owned the saloon. He had never owned anything before, but he had managed a few saloons, and though he had no particular criminal past, he had been fired on at least two previous occasions for stealing from his employer.

  Despite a past record of cheating his employers, Willie had never been prosecuted and never been put into jail. There had been several close calls, though, and those close calls had closed all the doors to him as far as honest employment was concerned. That being the case, there was nothing left for him but to come to Gehenna and trade with outlaws. What he had thought might be a hand-to-mouth existence proved to be a very profitable operation, cashing in on the misdeeds of others. Outlaws had no choice. They would pay Willie’s inflated prices for rotgut whiskey, or they didn’t drink.

  Gehenna was a robbers’ roost, a place of haven for men on the run. Fully three-fourths of the residents of the town were outlaws, and the remaining population made their living by serving the outlaws. Not one person in town was of sterling reputation.

  Dismounting in front of the saloon, Matt stepped up on the porch, paused for a moment, then pushed his way inside. Never was the lesson on how to enter a saloon more needed than here. He moved over to the wall and stood there for a moment.