Return of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “Who are your friends, Buck? These mountain men, I mean?”

  Sam stood open-mouthed as Buck reeled off the names of some of the most famous mountain men of all time. Sam finally blinked and said, “Those are some of the meanest old codgers that ever forked a bronc.”

  “Yeah,” Buck said with a grin as he swung into the saddle. “Ain’t they?”

  He waved good-bye to Becky and the kids and pointed Drifter’s nose south. A mile from Becky’s cabin, Buck turned straight east, toward the new camp of Preacher and his friends. Even Buck, knowing what to expect, drew up short at the sight that soon confronted him.

  Greybull and Beartooth were wrestling. Dupre was fiddling a French song while Nighthawk and Tenneysee were dancing. Together. Audie was standing on a stump, reciting pretty poetry to the others.

  “I hate to break this up,” Buck said.

  “Then don’t!” Preacher said. “Jist sit your cayuse and listen and learn. Go ahead, Audie. Tell us some more about that there Newton.”

  “Isaac Newton, you ignorant reprobate! I was merely stating Sir Newton’s theory that to every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.”

  “Then direct it to him,” Buck said, pointing at Preacher. “’Cause he sure is contrary.”

  Audie looked pained while the others laughed. He glowered at Buck. “If I had you in a classroom I’d take a hickory stick to the seat of your pants, young man.”

  “I don’t know nothing about Newton,” Buck said, still sitting on Drifter. “But I did like that poetry. Can you say some more of that?”

  “But of course, young outlaw called Smoke,” Audie said with a wave of his hand. “Dismount and gather around.”

  Dupre had stopped his fiddling, Nighthawk and Tenneysee their dancing, Greybull and Beartooth their wrestling.

  “‘I came to the place of my youth’,” Audie said, “‘and cried, The friends of my youth, where are they? And echo answered, Where are they?’”

  “That don’t make no damn sense,” Phew said.

  “And it don’t even rhyme,” Deadlead growled.

  “It doesn’t have to rhyme to be poetry!” Audie said. “I have told you heathens that time and again.”

  “Say something that’s purty,” Preacher said.

  “Yeah, that fits us’ns,” Powder Pete said.

  “What a monumental task you have verbally laid before me,” Audie said. “Very well. Let me think for a moment.”

  “And I don’t reckon it has to rhyme,” Matt said.

  Audie smiled. He said, “‘And in that town a dog was found. As many dogs there be, both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound, And curs of low degree. The dog, to gain some private ends, Went mad, and bit the man. The man recovered of the bite, The dog it was that died.’” Still smiling, Audie stepped off the stump and walked off, leaving the old mountain men to scratch their heads and ponder what he’d just said.

  “Is he callin’ us a bunch of dogs?” Lobo asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Preacher said.

  Deadlead looked at Nighthawk. “What do you think about it, Nighthawk?”

  “Ummm.”

  Buck’s ride to Challis was uneventful. He found the man named Gilmore, completed his business, and headed back. When he rode into Bury, past Miss Flora’s Pink House, he noticed the front door was closed, a hand-lettered sign hanging from a string. Closed, the sign read. Smiling, Buck rode to the PSR office and handed the receipt to MacGregor. The Scotsman had a worried look on his now-more-than-ever dour face.

  “What’s wrong?” Buck asked.

  “New territorial governor was just named. It wasn’t Potter. He’s fit to be tied.”

  “You knew it wouldn’t be all along, didn’t you?”

  “I had a rather strong suspicion.”

  “Now what?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t got enough evidence to bring any of the Big Three to court and make it stick. The Big Three violate a number of moral laws. But they run their own businesses on the up and up—so far as I’ve been able to find out. They have committed murder—either themselves or by hiring it out—but since this town, and all the people in it, belong to the Big Three, no one will talk. But there is a sour, rancid feeling hanging in the air, Buck, Smoke—what is your real name?”

  “Kirby.”

  MacGregor nodded absently. “I gather those mountain men in the timber are friends of yours?”

  “Preacher helped raise me. I know most of the others.” He named them.

  MacGregor chuckled. “Old bastards!” he said, with no malice in the profanity. “Did you know Audie is the holder of several degrees?”

  “Yes. How did you know about that?”

  “Oh, ever since I came out here, fifteen years ago, I have maintained a journal of sorts. I should like to take all those pages and turn them into a book someday. A book about mountain men. I’ve talked with many of them. But my God, they lie so much. I can’t tell what is truth and what is fiction.”

  “I’ve discovered that most of what they say is true.”

  “Really now, Smoke! A human being cannot successfully fight a grizzly bear and win!”

  “Negro Matt fought a mountain lion with his bare hands and killed it. Preacher fought a bear up on the North Milk in Canada and killed it. Jedediah Smith fought a grizzly and killed it—by himself. Bear chewed off one of his ears, though. Shoo Fly Miller had a grizzly bear for a pet. Those old boys are still about half hoss, half alligator.”

  “My word!” MacGregor said.

  “Stick around, Mac,” Buck said cheerfully. “If you live through what’s coming up shortly, you can write the final chapter to the lives of the mountain men.”

  It was going sour, Buck thought, walking from the PSR offices back to his hotel. He could sense it; an almost tangible sensation. The gunhands that were constantly in view were behaving in a surly manner. Cursing more and drinking more openly. Buck noticed a distinct lack of kids playing on the boardwalks and streets. He noticed a couple of loaded-down wagons parked in front of the general store.

  Buck stopped in front of a saloon and asked the scar-faced Joiner, “What’s going on?”

  “Two schoolteachers and their families pullin’ out. Didn’t like the way Miz Sally was treated. The boss is some sore, let me tell you.”

  Buck smiled.

  Joiner looked sourly at him. “You find something funny about that, West?”

  “Just that a man can’t push some women, is all.”

  Joiner grunted. It was obvious to Buck that he was looking for a fight. And Buck wasn’t.

  When Joiner saw that Buck wasn’t going to fight, he said, “There can’t be much sand to your bottom, boy.”

  Buck met him eye to eye. “If you want to get a shovel and start digging for that sand, Joiner, feel free to do so. But I’d suggest you make one stopover first for a little digging.”

  “Oh? And where’s that?”

  “Boot Hill.” Buck turned and walked on up the street. As he turned, his right side blocked to Joiner’s view, Buck slipped the hammer thong off his .44.

  He could feel Joiner’s eyes boring into his back as he walked.

  “Buck West!” Joiner shouted. “Turn and fight, you tinhorn!”

  Buck heard Joiner’s hand as his palm struck the wooden grips of his pistol.

  Turning, Buck drew, cocked, and fired, all in one fluid motion. Joiner’s pistol clattered to the wooden boardwalk as the .44 slug from Buck’s gun hit him squarely in the center of the chest. Joiner staggered backward, grabbed at a wooden chair for support, missed the arm of the chair, and sat down heavily on the boardwalk, one hand supporting himself, holding himself up, the other hand covering the hole in his chest.

  “You bassard!” Joiner hissed at Buck.

  “You pushed me, Joiner,” Buck reminded the man.

  Joiner groaned and let himself slump to the boards.

/>   Burton ran out of the apothecary shop, crossed the street, and knelt by the dying Joiner. When he looked up at Buck, his face was flushed with hate. “If you’re so damned good with a gun, why didn’t you just shoot the gun out of his hand? You didn’t have to kill him.”

  “I ain’t dead!” Joiner protested weakly.

  “You ain’t far from it,” Burton told him.

  “Get me a preacher!” Joiner said.

  “He’d probably do you more good than a doctor,” Burton agreed.

  Buck punched out the spent brass and slid a live round into the chamber. He dropped the empty brass to the dirt of the street just as the sounds of a carriage approaching rattled through the air. The carriage whoaed up beside the blood-slicked boardwalk and the tall gunhand standing impassively over the dying Joiner.

  “Oh, my word!” the woman seated in the carriage said.

  “Help me, Miz Janey!” Joiner cried.

  A group of Cornish miners, in town from their work at a nearby silver mine, gathered around, beer mugs in callused hands.

  “The bloke’s nearly done,” one immigrant from Cornwall observed. “Shall we sing him a fare-thee-well, mates?”

  “Aye. Let’s.”

  A half-dozen voices were raised in song, drunkenly offering up a hymn.

  A jig dancer from the hurly-gurly in front of which Joiner lay dying stepped out. “Can I have your pockets, love?” she asked Joiner.

  “Get away with you!” Reverend Necker said, running up. “You filthy whore!”

  “Careful, Bible-thumper,” the jig dancer said. “Or I’ll tell everybody where you was the other evenin’.”

  Necker flushed and bent down over the dying Joiner.

  “He kilt me!” Joiner said, pointing a trembling finger at Buck.

  “Damn sure did,” Necker said.

  Buck raised his eyes to look squarely at the woman seated in the fancy carriage.

  Janey met the tall young man’s direct stare.

  The elegantly dressed woman flushed as Buck’s eyes stared directly at her.

  “Save me, Preacher!” Joiner groaned. “I don’t wanna go to Hell. I got a family to take care of.”

  “Where are they, son?” Necker asked. He looked at the blood on his hands. Joiner’s blood. “Yukk!” Necker said.

  “Damned if I know,” Joiner said. Then he closed his eyes and did the world the greatest favor men of his ilk could do. He died.

  Janey stared at Buck. Her eyes widened as Buck smiled. She watched as Buck turned and walked away.

  It couldn’t be! she thought. That was impossible. Kirby was back in Missouri, probably working that damned hardscrabble farm.

  But she knew the man who had killed Joiner. She knew him. It was her brother.

  14

  Janey stood in her bedroom, absently gazing out the window. So Buck West was really Kirby Jensen, aka Smoke. She laughed, but the laugh was totally void of mirth. She suddenly remembered all the good times they’d shared as children, back in Missouri. It had been a hard life, but despite that, there had been plenty of love to go around. Never enough money for nice things, but none of them had gone hungry.

  “Crap!” Janey said, turning away from the window. She didn’t know what to do. The gunfighter was blood kin, but Janey felt no warmth toward him. She looked around her. Damned if she was going to give all this up for a man she hadn’t seen since he was a snot-nosed kid tryin’ to farm forty rocky acres with a damned ol’ mule.

  She walked downstairs, searching for Josh.

  “Gone, ma’am,” the Negro houseman informed her.

  “Gone, where?”

  “Up to the north range to inspect the herds, ma’am. Won’t be back for several days.”

  “Bull-droppings!” Janey blurted.

  The houseman’s eyes widened.

  “Thank you, Thomas,” Janey said. “That will be all.”

  Now she sure didn’t know what to do.

  MacGregor ceased his pacing, his mind made up. He would not leave Bury, as had been his original plan. He would stick it out here. If Buck West, aka Smoke Jensen, was successful in his plan, what a book that would make! And, the Scotsman smiled grimly, he could close the federal pages on Potter, Stratton, and Richards.

  “He’s really the outlaw Smoke?” Flora asked Sally.

  “He’s Smoke Jensen, but he’s no outlaw,” Sally told the gathering of joy-girls.

  “We can’t get out of town, Miss Sally,” Rosa said. “The little boy, Ben, says Potter and Stratton gave orders to that nasty Rosten not to rent us wagons or horses. We’re stuck.”

  Sally nodded. As Josh Richards had once explained to her, the Pink House was one of the best constructed buildings in town. The two-story structure was built of logs, with excellent craftsmanship in the construction, with carefully fitted corners. Instead of a mixture of clay and moss filling the chinks, solid mortar had been used. With a little rearranging of furniture, the house could easily withstand any stray bullets.

  “All right, ladies,” Sally said. “Here’s what we’ll do…”

  “What’s happening!” Deputy Rogers said. “I don’t understand none of it. It’s like…it’s like ever’thang was just fine one day, and the next day it’s all haywire!”

  Sheriff Dan Reese knew what was happening, but he didn’t feel like explaining it to this big dummy standing before him. He’d seen boom towns go sour before. And he knew that sometimes a feller could skin the clabber off the top and salvage the milk. Not often, but sometimes.

  But he had a sinking feeling it was too damn late for Bury.

  “Shut up, Rogers,” he said. He looked at his other deputies, Weathers and Payton. “You men check them shotguns and rifles. Git over to the store and stock up on shells. I don’t know why, but something tells me everything that’s happenin’ is the fault of that Buck West. Damn his eyes!”

  “So we is gonna do what?” Payton asked. Like Rogers, Payton was no mental giant.

  “I think the bosses is gonna tell us to kill him.”

  Potter turned from the second-floor window of the PSR offices to look at Stratton. “You feel it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Stratton said with a sigh. “Whatever it is.”

  “I had the territorial governorship in the palm of my hand,” Potter said. “And suddenly, for no reason, I lose it. Why? A seemingly intelligent, reasonable young woman, a very capable school teacher, suddenly falls for a gunslick. Why? And now I discover that Buck West—or whatever his name is—is buddy-buddy with Sam, and Sam is sharing the blankets with a squatter. What’s happening around here?”

  “Don’t forget the mountain men gathering up in the deep timber.”

  “That’s right.”

  The two men looked at each other and suddenly their brains began to click and hum in unison.

  “Mountain men helped raise Kirby Jensen,” Stratton said.

  “We’ve all heard the rumors that Preacher wasn’t killed,” Potter said.

  “All our troubles started when Buck West arrived in town.”

  The men sent a flunky for Sheriff Dan Reese.

  “Anybody have any idee whatever happened to old Maurice Leduc?” Deadlead asked.

  The mountain men were camped openly and brazenly about two miles outside of Bury. They knew their reputation had preceded them, and they likewise knew that none of the Big Three’s gunhands were about to attack the camp. For one thing, they held the vantage point—the crest of a low hill. For another, no twenty-five cowboys-turned-gunhands were about to attack a dozen old hardbitten mountain men; especially not the most notorious bunch of mountain men to ever prowl the high lonesome. No matter that none of the mountain men would ever see seventy years of age again. That had nothing to do with it. Even at seventy, most of them could still outshoot and outfight men half their age.

  Lobo said, “Last I heard, ol’ Leduc come back up to near Bent’s fort and built hisself a cabin; him and a teenage Mex gal. Took up gardenin’.” That was said very contemptuous
ly.

  “Hale’s far!” Powder Pete said. “That was back in ’58.”

  “Wal, what year is this here we’re in?” Dupre asked.

  “Oh…about ’75, I reckon,” Tenneysee said.

  “You don’t say,” Greybull said. “My, time does git away from a man, don’t it?”

  “If that is the case,” Audie said. “And I will admit that I don’t even know what year it is, not really, I was born seventy-one years ago.”

  “And got uglier every year,” Preacher said.

  “You should talk. You’re so ugly you could pose for totem poles.”

  “I ’member the furst time I seen one of the things,” Phew said. “Up in Washington Territory. Like to have plumb scared me out of my ’skins.”

  “That’d probably been a good thing for all concerned,” Matt said. “Least you’da took a bath then. You ain’t been out of them skins in fifty year.”

  “I wish Smoke would git things a-smokin’ down yonder,” Beartooth said. “I’m a-cravin’ a mite of action.”

  “He’ll start stirrin’ it up in a day or three,” Preacher opined. “And then we’ll all have all the action we can handle. Bet on it.”

  “Reckon whut he’s a-doin’ down there?” Lobo asked.

  “Probably tryin’ to spark that schoolmarm,” Preacher said. “He’s shore stuck on her.”

  “What do you mean, I can’t come in?” Buck said, standing on the front porch of the Pink House.

  “Buck,” Sally’s voice came through the closed door. “You’d better get out of town. Little Ben just slipped up to the back door and told us Sheriff Reese and his deputies are looking for you. Word just drifted into town that you’re Smoke Jensen.”

  So the cat was out of the bag. Fine. He was getting tired of being Buck West. “You…ladies have plenty of food and water?”

  “Enough for a month-long siege. Go on, Buck.”

  “Call me Smoke.”