Ambush of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “That’s gonna split us up pretty good,” Stevens said.

  “Not really,” Sarah said. “Remember, Jensen’s on foot and doesn’t have any weapons. We can send one man east and one man west. If he’s out there in the open, they should be able to run him down before nightfall and take him prisoner again.”

  “What about south?” Cletus asked.

  “I think one man should be able to get back down the trail and warn Bartlett and Gomez and Free to be on the lookout for him,” she said. “That should leave us plenty of men to undertake a campaign to catch him before he can get too far into the mountains if he headed north.”

  Cletus shook his head in admiration. “Missy, I wish I’d had you running my outfit during the war. You plumb got a mind for tactics.”

  “Well, I’d suggest we get a move on,” she said. “Clete, you pick the men to go east and west and south, and I’ll see to getting their canteens filled with hot coffee to keep them from freezing to death on the way.”

  “We got time to eat first, Miss MacDougal?” Stevens asked, his face hopeful.

  “Certainly. We can’t go out into this storm on a manhunt with our bellies empty, now can we, men?”

  Cletus laughed. “Jimmy, get those beans to cookin’, boy, we got a man to catch.”

  “Yes, sir,” Corbett answered, using a long stick to stir the coals under the trestle that contained the pot of beans and fatback.

  As Sarah began to fill canteens with hot coffee, Cletus looked at her and shook his head. He’d never seen a better performance. No one would ever suspect that she’d let Jensen go herself, and he damn sure wasn’t going to enlighten anyone.

  He stepped over to the edge of the fire and stood looking into the north wind, in the direction Jensen must have gone if he was to have any chance to avoid capture.

  What would it take for a man to have the courage to take off on foot into a blizzard like this with no weapons and no warm clothes to speak of? he wondered.

  He chuckled to himself, knowing full well the answer to that question. A man would have to be completely without hope of survival otherwise to take a chance like that, and Jensen certainly knew that for him to stay in camp would mean certain death.

  As Sarah called to him that the beans and fatback were ready, he turned and shook his head. The man didn’t stand a chance in this weather, he thought, but at least freezing to death was probably less painful that a bullet.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Pearlie jerked his horse to a stop in front of Dr. Colton Spalding’s office, bounded out of the saddle, and raced through the front door without bothering to knock.

  Spalding, who was called Cotton by all of his friends due to his ash-blond, almost white hair, looked up from his rolltop desk in the corner of his parlor. When he saw the agitation in Pearlie’s face, he got to his feet and began putting on his coat before the young man had a chance to speak.

  “Doc, you gotta come!” Pearlie gasped, still out of breath from his breakneck ride into town.

  Cotton picked up his black bag and a pair of gloves from the side table in the hallway. “Of course, Pearlie,” he said. “Is there trouble out at the Sugarloaf?”

  “No, Doc, it’s Monte Carson,” Pearlie answered. “His hoss was shot out from under him and he took a terrible fall. He hit his head an’ he ain’t been exactly actin’ right since then.”

  “Where is he?” Cotton asked as they exited his door, followed by his wife Mona, who’d heard the commotion and joined them in the parlor. He gave Mona a quick kiss good-bye and told her he’d be back as soon as possible. When she went back in the door, he didn’t bother to lock it in case someone needing his care wanted to come in and wait for his return, in which case his wife Mona, who was also his nurse, would take of that person.

  “Out on the road north of town, ‘bout five or six miles by now,” he answered.

  “By now?” Cotton asked, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t tell me he is being moved.”

  “Uh . . . yes, sir,” Pearlie said. “Louis is riding double with him to keep him on horseback.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” Cotton said under his breath as he climbed up into his wagon that was hitched in front of his office.

  “You’d better take me there as fast as you can, Pearlie, and let us hope we’re not too late and that moving him has not caused irreparable damage to his brain.”

  When they met up with Louis and Sally and Cal on the road into town, Cotton pulled his wagon to the side of the road. “Pearlie, scrape that snow out of the back of the wagon and get those blankets out from under the tarp there under the seat. Make a bed for Monte as best you can.”

  Monte was sitting unconscious in front of Louis, being held in place by Louis’s hands around him. The sheriff’s head lolled limply to and fro as the horse moved.

  “Cal, get over here and help me take Monte down and get him in the back of my wagon, but be as gentle as you can,” the doctor ordered.

  Moments later, Monte was lying on his back in the rear compartment of Cotton’s wagon and the doctor was leaning over him, checking his pupils and feeling of his pulse.

  “Has he had any violent purging . . . uh, vomiting?” he asked Sally.

  “Yes, once, right after he tried to get up after the fall,” she answered.

  Cotton shook his head. “That’s not a good sign. It means he’s definitely had a concussion.”

  Sally, standing at his side, said, “I know a head injury shouldn’t be moved, Cotton, but I thought the time saved getting him under your care and out of the cold was worth the danger of moving him.” She gave Monte a worried look. “There was no shelter on the trail and we had no way of keeping him warm in this storm.”

  “You’re probably right, Sally,” Cotton said, not looking away from his patient. “At any rate, it’s hard to say which is worse, exposure to the elements or movement.”

  He straightened up after tucking the blankets around Monte to keep him as warm as possible. “Now, I need to get him back to my office where he can be properly cared for.”

  As he climbed up onto the seat of the wagon, he looked back down at Sally. “Perhaps you’d better swing back by Monte’s house and tell Mary what is going on,” he said. “She can come to my office and sit with him if she wishes.”

  “How serious is it, Cotton?” Sally asked.

  The doctor shrugged. “Well, it’s a good sign that he survived the trip on horseback. He’s obviously had some minor bleeding in his head and a severe concussion. The only question now is will he have any more and just how much damage what he’s already had has done to his mind.” As he took up the reins, he added, “He’s going to need some luck.”

  After Cotton slapped the reins on his horses’ rears and moved off down the trail, Louis asked Sally, “What do we do about Smoke?”

  She shook her head. “First, I need to go talk to Mary and tell her what happened.” She hesitated. “We can’t do Smoke any good right now, not with those men blocking the trail.”

  “Miss Sally,” Cal said, “we could get a big posse together in less time than it takes to say it. Heck, just about everbody in Big Rock would go along if’n they thought Smoke was in trouble.”

  “He’s correct, Sally,” Louis agreed. “With a large number of men we could get by that ambush and go after the men who took Smoke.”

  Sally turned tortured eyes to Louis. “Yes, Louis, I believe we could do that. But how many men would get hurt or possibly killed trying to get past that ambush site?”

  When he paused, unable to answer, Sally smiled sadly. “See what I mean? Do you think Smoke would want a lot of townspeople getting hurt trying to rescue him?”

  Louis reluctantly shook his head. “No, I guess not, Sally.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder. “Look at it this way. If whoever took him wanted to kill him, he’s already dead. If he’s still alive by now, then there is some other reason for taking him and keeping him alive. Either way, waiting until morning to continue our trip after
them won’t make much difference.”

  “You think the men guarding the trail will be gone by then?” Pearlie asked.

  She nodded. “Probably. They cannot hope to hold the trail forever. My guess is they were just trying to give whoever has Smoke time to get to where they’re going. We should be able to get by in the morning.”

  “I just hope we’re not too late for Smoke,” Cal said, his voice heavy.

  Sally swung up into the saddle and smiled. “Cal, you should have more faith in Smoke. He has managed to survive much worse than this for a lot of years.”

  Louis laughed as he kicked his horse to follow Sally. “That’s a fact!” he said.

  Just as Cletus and Sarah and their men were saddling up their mounts, Daniel Macklin approached Cletus. “Say, Clete, I think somebody ought’a ride on over to the ranch and tell Angus what’s goin’ on,” he said, his eyes flicking from Sarah to Cletus, not sure who was in charge of the men since she’d arrived.

  Cletus tightened the cinch-belt on his saddle and said over his shoulder, “And just why would you think that, Mac, since Angus put me in charge of this little fracas?”

  Macklin rubbed his jaw. “Well, for starters, you got four men coverin’ our back trail, an’ two more headin’ off east and west, so that only leaves six or seven of us to head out after Jensen in the mountains.”

  “So, I say again Mac, what is your point?”

  “I done some talkin’ ‘bout Jensen when I was in his town waiting for Sarah to make up her mind what to do,” Macklin said, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye to make sure she wasn’t taking his talk wrong.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “What I found out was this Jensen is not only a famous gunfighter, he was a mountain man from the time he was a little boy until just a few years ago.”

  Now Macklin had Cletus’s full attention. “Is that a fact?” Cletus said, his lips tight.

  “Yep, an’ you know that a handful of us cowboys ain’t gonna be no match for a mountain man up in those mountains,” Macklin said, glancing off in the direction of the snow-covered peaks to the north, barely visible in the light snowfall.

  Cletus followed his gaze. “You may be right, Mac. Of course, I’m hoping to catch up to Jensen ‘fore he gets a chance to get up into those mountains.”

  Macklin shrugged. “If you do, then you’ll be able to handle him with no problem, assuming you catch him out in the open.” He hesitated. “Of course, if you don’t, you’re gonna need all the help you can get.”

  Cletus glanced at Sarah, who was busily cinching up her saddle and pretending not to be paying any attention to their talk. Cletus was caught in a dilemma. He wanted Jensen to do exactly what Macklin said he was worried about, that is, get up into the mountains and disappear so they couldn’t find him and take him back to Angus. But he didn’t want Angus to suspect as much, so he had to play the game of doing his best to capture the gunman.

  “I guess you’re right, Mac. Why don’t you hightail it on ahead to the ranch and see if Angus wants to hire more men to come out here and help us hunt Jensen down if he makes it to the mountains? That way, we can leave it up to Angus how much he really wants Jensen.”

  Macklin nodded. “My thoughts exactly, Clete.”

  Cletus thought for a moment, and then he added, “If you do bring more men, plan to meet up with us at that old line cabin at the base of the mountain near where that stream comes out onto flat ground.”

  Mac nodded and he swung up into his saddle, tipped his hat, and put the spurs to his mount, heading up the road toward the MacDougal ranch in Pueblo.

  Cletus looked over at Sarah to see how she was taking this, but all he could see was that her jaw was set and her lips were tightly squeezed together as she finished setting her saddle and throwing her saddlebags across the animal’s rump.

  “That all right with you, Sarah?” he asked.

  She turned to look at him, still not realizing he knew she’d been the one to turn Smoke loose. “Sure, Clete. What Mac said made sense, and we may well need some help if Jensen makes it up into those slopes.”

  Cletus put his foot in his stirrup and eased up onto the back of his horse. “I just hope Angus don’t send a bunch of flatlanders that don’t know which end of a gun the bullet comes out of to help us. Otherwise, we’re gonna need more’n one wagon to carry all the bodies back in.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Instead of trying to run the entire several miles to the lower slopes of the nearest mountain and exhausting himself, Smoke alternated walking at a fast pace with jogging for fifty yards. He kept his head lowered and his eyes squinted against the blowing snow and wind in his face, but even so, it wasn’t long before his eyes began to burn and itch from the drying effects of the constant wind.

  He’d known men up in the mountains who’d had their eyes frozen shut by blizzards like this, and he didn’t want to take any chances, so he kept the brim of his hat down low and his head bent down, glancing up occasionally to make sure he wasn’t about to walk into a crevice or boulder.

  Soon, the snow had accumulated to a depth almost up to his knees, and it was beginning to make walking extremely difficult and running impossible. He knew he was going to have trouble getting to deep cover on the mountainside before dawn. The only good thing about the amount of snow falling was that it would completely obliterate his tracks so if the gang of men tried to follow them, they wouldn’t be able to find him, and it would slow them down as much as it was him.

  Normally, faced with a storm such as this and no horse, Smoke would cut some branches off pine trees and build himself a lean-to to weather out the storm out of the wind. With ten or so angry men on his trail, this wasn’t an option, but if he didn’t do something to get out of the weather, he was going to freeze to death while he walked. His only hope was to make it until dawn lightened the eastern sky so he could find something else that would do to both hide him and keep him out of the cold.

  By the time the eastern sky began to lighten enough for him to see his surroundings, Smoke was shivering with cold and was weak from dehydration. His sweat had frozen on his skin and his mouth was so dry he couldn’t work up a good spit.

  He resisted the urge to eat snow, as that would only lower his body temperature. He knew of several mountain men who’d made that mistake and hadn’t lived to tell about it.

  As the day got brighter, Smoke noticed a fallen ponderosa pine off to his right. It appeared to have been struck by lightning, as there was a jagged, blackened scar along its trunk.

  He slogged over to it, and saw to his relief that the giant had taken out several other smaller trees around it when it crashed to the ground. Smoke moved along the trunk until he came to the jumble of broken and crushed limbs at the top of the tree. Sure enough, it was as he’d hoped. The tangle of tree limbs and trunks and roots made a perfectly acceptable place to get out of sight and weather out the rest of the storm.

  With any luck, the men chasing him would just ride on by if they came this way.

  Smoke pushed aside a thick branch and bent over to worm his way into the thick tangle. He froze when he heard a low growl from in front of him. He realized immediately what it was. It was the sound of a mountain cougar who’d had the same idea of using the tree for shelter as Smoke had.

  Moving slowly, Smoke took out the small clasp knife and worked the blade open, trying not to provoke the big cat into a charge. He couldn’t see the animal in the gloom of the enclosure, but he could smell its fetid breath and musky odor as if it was very close.

  Suddenly the cat snarled and rushed at him out of the darkness of the jumble of tree limbs. Smoke jumped back and let go of the branch he’d been bending back to enter. The branch snapped forward, catching the cougar in the face as it leapt at Smoke.

  Smoke dove onto the cat before it could regain its balance and slashed to and fro with the small knife, praying he’d hit the throat before the cat got his arm in its powerful jaws.

  They rolled over a c
ouple of times, Smoke almost screaming at the burning pain as the cat raked his back with its claws. Luckily, the intervening branch kept the cougar from gutting Smoke with its hind feet as cougars usually did.

  Moments later, it was over. The cougar gasped its last breath as Smoke’s knife tore its throat open almost to the spine.

  Unable to see the damage to his back, Smoke did the next best thing. He pulled his shirt up and lay on his back in the snow, rocking back and forth and letting the coldness stop the bleeding and wash out his wounds.

  The pain was almost unbearable, but he counted himself lucky to be alive and a little pain was a small price to pay for shelter, and now food. He sat up and pulled his shirt back down over his back, wincing as the deerskin scraped the raw wounds. He had no way of knowing if the bleeding had stopped, but figured he’d find out soon enough if the blood soaked the shirt.

  He didn’t dare start a fire, so he quickly skinned the cougar and gutted it. Since liver has the most nutrients, Smoke ate as much of the raw liver as his stomach could take. Once he’d filled his belly, he scraped the skin as best he could and cut it into wide pieces he could wrap around his lower legs as leggings, to keep from getting frostbite when he walked through deep snow. It wouldn’t smell very good, he thought with a smile, but that was the least of his worries.

  With the still-warm liver in his stomach, he risked eating enough snow to slake his thirst, and then he curled up in the crown of the fallen tree under a blanket of pine boughs and the rest of the cougar skin. He was asleep instantly.

  Cletus took the lead, with Sarah right behind him, as the group headed through the forest toward the mountain whose peak couldn’t be seen through the driving snow.

  Even though they were on horseback, they couldn’t move much faster than Smoke had been able to because of the depth of the snow and the uneven, wooded terrain.