Ambush of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Sarah stepped over and laid her hand gently on Angus’s shoulder. “That doesn’t alter the fact that Johnny was shot down in cold blood, Daddy, and that was after they slashed his face and knocked his teeth out.”

  Angus turned sad eyes to his daughter and covered her hand with his. “You’re right, Sarah. Even though Johnny was spoiled and a hothead who never knew when to shut his mouth, he didn’t deserve to be shot down in the street like a stray dog for it, him and his friends both.”

  Tupper leaned forward, his arms on the table. “Now Angus, don’t go off half-cocked. Johnny’s dead, and there ain’t nothing you can do gonna change that.” He took out his handkerchief and wiped his sweaty forehead with it as he continued. “Killing Jensen and his men won’t change anything, Angus.”

  Angus looked over at the sheriff and his lips curled in a deadly smile. “No, I can’t change it, Wally, but I can sure as hell make sure someone pays for what they did to my boy.”

  Sarah blinked back tears, and turned and walked slowly from the room and out the door to stand on the front porch, staring at the mountain peaks in the distance. She’d always hated Johnny, ever since they were little kids. Up until she was five years old, she’d been the apple of her daddy’s eye and he’d taken her everywhere with him, teaching her to ride and shoot like a man.

  Then, Johnny had been born and her life had changed forever. All of a sudden, it was as if she ceased to exist and her daddy’s world revolved around his new son.

  It hadn’t been fair; from the beginning, she could ride and shoot better than Johnny, and was smarter in the bargain. But that didn’t matter to Angus MacDougal. All he cared about was having a son to carry on his name. Well, that was over now, Sarah thought bitterly. His precious son’s big mouth had finally gotten him into some trouble their daddy couldn’t buy his way out of.

  Sarah shook her head and entered the house again, and walked into her room and began to pack her bags. She planned to be in Big Rock when Smoke Jensen and his friends arrived. She had it all worked out in her mind: She’d move into town using a fake name, get a job, and no one would know she’d come there to put Smoke Jensen in his grave.

  As she flung her clothes into the valise, she thought that maybe then Angus would again give her the respect and attention she deserved.

  THREE

  Sheriff Monte Carson was waiting at the station in Big Rock when Smoke Jensen and his friends, Cal, Pearlie, and Louis Longmont, got off the train.

  The four men looked tired and their faces were drawn from the long train ride from up near the Canadian border, and it looked as if they’d all lost weight on their journey to Canada and back.

  As they stepped down out of the passenger car, Monte turned to his deputy. “Jim, why don’t you see to their horses and luggage and I’ll take them over to Longmont’s Saloon.” He chuckled. “They look like they could do with some good food for a change.”

  Monte walked over and slapped Smoke on the shoulder, smiling at the men standing next to him. “Well, boys, I’ll bet it’s good to get home, ain’t it?” he asked.

  “It is certainly good to get my posterior off of those torture devices the railroad calls seats,” Louis said, stretching and rubbing his butt at the same time. “I do believe they stuff those seats with rocks,” he added, wincing at the pain in his buttocks.

  “Just think how bad it would’a been if we would’a had to sit in regular seats ‘stead of those padded ones in Mr. Hill’s car,” Pearlie said.

  “I rather not think about that eventuality, if you don’t mind,” a grouchy Louis rejoined.

  Monte’s deputy tipped his hat and said hi to the men before he walked off down the platform toward the baggage and livestock cars.

  “Jim’s gonna get your hosses and luggage and all,” Monte said. “Why don’t we head on over to Louis’s place and get some good grub into you boys,” he said, hesitating before adding, “You all look like you been starved half to death up there in the North Country.”

  Pearlie’s tired face broke into a wide smile. “Did I hear somebody say grub?”

  Smoke nodded. “That sounds awfully good, Monte. I could use some coffee that I don’t have to chew before swallowing.” He smiled. “After riding with mountain men for a spell, any coffee that won’t float a horseshoe is considered too weak to bother with.”

  “Yeah,” Cal added. “Like they said, their coffee don’t take near as much water as you think it do,” he said, doing a fair imitation of Bear Tooth’s growl.

  Daniel Macklin sat on a bench at the far end of the platform, whittling on a stick and watching the men as they moved off toward the downtown area. He’d been on this same bench watching the arrival of each and every train that’d pulled into Big Rock for the past three months. His lips curled into a slow grin as he realized his job was just about over.

  The fingers of Macklin’s right hand twitched as they hung just above the butt of his pistol, tied down low on his right thigh. He forced the hand to relax, deciding to wait until he’d contacted Angus MacDougal before he braced Jensen. He hoped when Angus found out Jensen was back in town that he would wire him back giving him permission to kill the son of a bitch. That would be fitting, he thought, since the men Jensen had killed had been some of his best friends.

  He got slowly to his feet, dropped the sharpened stick to the ground as he leaned his shoulder against the corner of the building, and waited for Carl Jacoby to get off the train. Angus had wired him Jacoby was trailing Jensen, so Macklin figured he’d be somewhere on the same train.

  Sure enough, a few minutes after Jensen and his friends had left, Macklin saw Jacoby exit a car further down the track. As Jacoby put his bag down and looked around, Macklin gave a low whistle and grinned. Jacoby was also a good friend of his, though Macklin thought he was a dumb ass for mooning over Sarah MacDougal like a hound dog in heat. Sarah would never give ordinary cowhands like them the time of day—she had been groomed since she was just a pup for finer things, men more important than country boys. Of course, that was before her brother had been killed. Who knows what was going on in her mind at this stage?

  Jacoby nodded, picked up his bag, and walked toward Macklin. “Hey, Mac, how’re you doin’?” Jacoby asked.

  Macklin looked down at the large pile of wood shavings from his whittling and grinned. “I’m doin’ a mite better now that you and Jensen are here,” he replied, glancing over his shoulder at Jensen’s group as they walked down the street away from the station. “I’m sick of coolin’ my heels here for the past few months waitin’ on y’all to get back from the North Country.”

  “I hear that,” Jacoby said, nodding his agreement. “Come on,” he added, “show me to the nearest saloon. My mouth’s so dry I’m spittin’ cotton.”

  Macklin pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you think we’d better wire ol’ Angus first and tell him everbody’s here?”

  “Naw,” Jacoby said, waving his hand in dismissal of the thought. “I wired him from along the way tellin’ him when we were gonna get here. Besides, there’s some things I gotta tell you ‘fore we decide on just how to proceed with this matter, important things.”

  Upon hearing that his boss and friend was back, Andre rushed from the kitchen in Longmont’s Saloon and wrapped his arms around Louis’s shoulders, giving him a quick kiss on both cheeks in the French manner.

  “Thank you, Andre,” Louis said, smiling at the man who’d been both his chef and his good friend for many years. “I’m glad to see you also.”

  “But Monsieur Louis,” Andre said, clucking his tongue and shaking his head as he stepped back and took a good look at Louis. “You have lost much weight on your journey. Did not those railroad men up there in Canada feed you?”

  “Not nearly enough, Andre,” Pearlie piped up from the rear of the group of men.

  Andre glanced up and smiled. “Ah, Monsieur Pearlie, my most ardent customer.”

  “If ardent means hungry,” Pearlie said, “you sure got th
at right, Andre.” He took his seat at the table and stared at the chef with anticipation. “How long before we can get some lunch?”

  Andre laughed. “I will get to work immediately,” he said. “I will see that fresh coffee is prepared while I fix you a lunch that will put some weight back on your bones and some strength back in your muscles.”

  The men all took seats at Louis’s regular table just as the young black man who was the head waiter appeared carrying a tray with a silver coffee service and five mugs on it.

  As they drank their coffee, Monte leaned back and said, “All right now, boys, tell me all about your adventures up there north of the border.”

  “First, Monte,” Smoke said, “I want to know if you’ve heard from Sally.”

  “Oh, dagnabit, I almost forgot,” Monte said. “I got a wire yesterday that said she’d gotten your telegram saying you were on your way home. She said her father is doing much better and she will probably be here in the next week or so.”

  Smoke didn’t answer, but the smile on his face showed he was pleased at the news. Before he’d left for Canada a few months back, his wife Sally had gone back East to be with her ailing father. Smoke was glad to hear the man was better and that she’d be home soon, for he missed her terribly.

  Pearlie stuck a cigarette he’d built into his mouth, leaned back as he got it going, and proceeded to give a slightly exaggerated account of the men’s adventures in the Canadian wilds over the past six months. He ended his narrative with the tale of the train robbers. “And Cal here actually got into the gunfight with us without getting wounded, if you can believe that!” Pearlie said, taking a breath and finally getting around to sampling his coffee, which was cooling by now.

  Cal unconsciously reached under the table and rubbed the sore spot on his thigh where he had in fact been slightly wounded, something he’d managed to keep from his friends. It wasn’t his fault that bullets just naturally seemed to seek him out, no matter how careful he was in the gunfights. Luckily, though he was a frequent target, none of the wounds had been overly serious.

  Monte laughed and slapped Cal on the back. “Well, now, that is something. Maybe your luck’s changing, Cal,” he said just as Andre appeared followed by two waiters with platters of heaping food in their hands.

  Pearlie hurriedly stubbed out his cigarette and rubbed his hands together. “All right!”

  Andre caught Louis and Smoke’s eyes and winked. “I am glad to see that you are so hungry, Monsieur Pearlie,” he said, nodding his head.

  “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse, Andre,” Pearlie said, straining in his chair trying to look and see what the platters held.

  “That is good, my friend, for I have just acquired a new supply of frog legs and escargot from my supplier in Denver this very morning.”

  Pearlie made a face and sat back in his chair. “Uh, Andre, no offense, but I think I’ll just skip the frog legs and try some of that es-car-go, or whatever it is. It shore smells good, I’ll tell you that.”

  “And I assure you, Monsieur, it will be a taste you will never forget, especially when you dip the little creatures in the melted butter I’ve made.”

  “Uh . . . did you say somethin’ ‘bout little creatures, Andre, or did I misunderstand?” Pearlie asked, his face suddenly showing signs of suspicion.

  “Mais oui, Pearlie, I did say creatures.”

  “But, Andre. Just what are es-car-go?”

  “Snails, my friend, large, plump, juicy snails,” Andre replied.

  Pearlie put his hand over his mouth and started to get up from the table until he saw what was on the platter the waiter was setting down.

  He grinned and pointed. “That looks like beefsteak to me, Andre.”

  Everyone at the table laughed, even Pearlie, and they all grabbed knives and forks and dug in.

  FOUR

  Macklin took Jacoby by his hotel, arranged for him to get a room there and dropped off his luggage, and then showed him to a restaurant that served both liquor and food.

  While they drank a glass of whiskey and waited for their food orders to arrive, Jacoby told Macklin about the gunfight on the train between Jensen and his friends and the outlaws who’d outnumbered them.

  Jacoby shook his head and drained his glass, sleeving whiskey off his lips with his arm. “It was the damnedest thing I ever seen, Mac,” he said, his eyes wide with wonder. “One minute Jensen an’ his friends are standing there in front of maybe ten outlaws, an’ ‘fore you could spit, they hands was full of iron and they was blasting the shit outta those hombres.”

  “Just because a man’s an outlaw don’t necessarily mean he’s fast on the draw, Carl.”

  “That’s just it, Mac. All of them bandits already had their guns in their hands when Jensen and his men drew down on ‘em.”

  “And you’re sayin’ none of those outlaws managed to draw any blood?”

  Jacoby held his glass up and pointed at it so the waiter would bring him another. “That’s just what I’m saying, Mac. Jensen and his men walked away from that fracas clean as a whistle. And what was even more funny is they didn’t wait for the bandits to make a play at them or try to take their money. They went looking for the outlaws as if they kind’a enjoyed the thought of a good fight.”

  Macklin’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Jacoby. “Just what are you sayin’, Carl? You sayin’ Jensen is faster on the draw that Johnny MacDougal was?” he asked, his face showing his doubt that such could be the case.

  “Hey, Mac, I’m telling you the truth,” Jacoby insisted. “I know Johnny was fast with a six-killer ‘cause I’ve drawed against him in contests before, but Jensen is faster, by a long shot!”

  Macklin stroked his jaw as he let his eyes drop to stare into his whiskey. “So, you think it may’ve been a fair fight when Jensen shot Johnny down in Pueblo?” he asked, keeping his voice low so the nearby diners wouldn’t hear him mention Jensen’s name.

  Jacoby shrugged. “Hell, I weren’t there, Mac, so’s I can’t say for certain. All I know is Jensen could snatch a quarter off’n a rattler’s head and leave two dimes an’ a nickel in change ‘fore the snake could strike.” He raised his hand to the waiter and indicated he wanted another drink and he wanted it fast. All this talk about how fast Jensen was with a gun was making him nervous. Sweat formed on his forehead when he remembered how he’d once planned on bracing Jensen himself.

  After the waiter placed two more glasses on the table in front of them, Jacoby glanced down at the way Macklin was wearing his gun low on his right hip. “And by the way, Mac,” he said, pausing to take a deep draught of his drink, “I’ve seen you draw before too. So if you’re planning on going up against Jensen, you’d better plan on shooting him in the back from a long way off, or I’ll be taking your dead body back to Pueblo with me when I leave this burg.”

  Macklin’s face flushed and he gritted his teeth for a sharp retort, but was interrupted by the waiter reappearing with a platter containing their food orders on it in his hands. When the waiter left, Jacoby, who’d noticed the angry expression on Macklin’s face when he warned him not to try and outdraw Jensen, wisely decided to change the subject before Macklin got really pissed off.

  He cut his steak and stuck a piece in his mouth, asking around it, “You been here long enough to ask around, so what is Jensen’s reputation in his town?”

  Macklin busied himself with cutting his own steak and didn’t look up at the question, though he snorted derisively through his nose. “Hell, around here they think he’s better than homemade apple pie,” he answered. “I couldn’t find a single person in this entire town had a bad word to say about Jensen or the men riding with him.” He stuck the meat in his mouth and added, “Hell, seems Jensen himself founded this town some years ago, so naturally nobody’s gonna say nothing against him.”

  Jacoby sighed. “That’s what I was figured you’d say,” he said as he used his fork to rake some corn onto his knife and then stuffed it into his mouth. “From what I seen
on the train, Jensen is pretty much a square shooter,” he added as he chewed thoughtfully.

  Macklin shrugged and asked, “So what? Angus MacDougal didn’t send us here to check out his character. He sent us here to let him know when he got home an’ possibly to put a bullet in him and his friends.”

  “But Mac,” Jacoby said, shoving his plate to the side and leaning forward, “what if his fight with Johnny was fair an’ it was like they said, that Johnny fired off shots at them first? Hell, we all know what an asshole Johnny could be when he was all liquored up.”

  “Don’t make no never mind to me what happened back in Pueblo,” Macklin answered, his eyes burning. “All I know is Johnny and the others that died with him were friends of mine, an’ I aim to see Jensen in his grave for what he done to them!” He paused for a moment, staring at Jacoby as if he were an enemy instead of one of his oldest friends. “An’ I aim to do it with you or without you, Carl, so don’t be getting in my way or you’re liable to catch some lead too.”

  Jacoby snarled back, “Don’t go playin’ the big man with me, Mac. Remember, I seen you draw before an’ I ain’t all that certain you could take me, even if you was crazy enough to try.”

  “Well, then, how ‘bout I put it like this. Old Man MacDougal been pretty good to both of us, it seems, so if’n he wants Jensen dead, for whatever reason, it’s plenty good enough for me.”

  Jacoby started to reply, but Macklin added, “And what do you think Sarah is gonna say when she hears you’ve gone all soft and sweet on Jensen, the man what killed her baby brother?”

  Jacoby let his eyes drop to what remained of his meal, his appetite squashed by the question. “Maybe if I explain to her that—”

  “Explain what?” Macklin burst out. “That the man who put six slugs in her little brother after bashing out his front teeth is really a nice feller and we should just forget about the whole thing?”