Suddenly, from up ahead, Gomez whispered, “Madre de Dios!”
“Now what are you saying?” Angus asked, until he saw where Juan was staring.
Up ahead, standing in the middle of the trail, was a man dressed in buckskins. He had a pistol in a holster tied down low on his right leg, and another pistol stuck in his belt facing his left hand. He was standing in the trail as cool and composed as if he were out for a walk.
“Jensen!” Angus hissed as he looked over Biggs’s shoulder at the man.
“That’s right, Mr. MacDougal. Now that the odds are fair, I’m ready to face you and your men headon.”
“Odds fair?” Josh Stone asked incredulously. “But it’s four to one.”
Smoke shrugged. “That’s about right, I ’spect. I want to give you men at least a fighting chance.”
“Holy shit!” Biggs whispered.
“Now, you can hook and draw, or you can turn tail and ride on off and live to enjoy another beautiful day in the High Lonesome,” Smoke said, seemingly unconcerned about their decision. “It’s your choice.”
“Son of a bitch!” Stone yelled and went for his gun, as did Biggs and Gomez.
Angus had never seen anything like it. One minute Jensen was standing there, as cool as a cucumber; the next his eyes were on fire and his hands were full of iron and he was blazing away at them.
Stone was hit in the throat, the slug blowing out the back of his neck and almost decapitating him. His body fell to the side, the head flopping back and forth on a slender thread of tissue.
Gomez didn’t even clear leather before he was hit twice, once in the left chest and the other bullet hitting him right between the eyes, blowing the back of his head off and leaving a cloud of red mist hanging in the air as Angus and Biggs were showered with bits of skull and brains.
Biggs actually managed to get his gun out and cocked before Jensen’s fourth slug took him in the gut, bending him over with a loud grunt. The fifth shot entered the top of his head and stopped his groaning as if a switch had been turned off.
As Biggs’s body fell off the horse to land facedown in the snow, Angus stuck his hands straight up in the air, his face a frightened mask of terror.
“I’ve got one bullet left, Mr. MacDougal,” Smoke said calmly, seemingly unaffected by his killing of three men in less time than it takes to tell it. “You want to try your luck?”
Angus shook his head violently from side to side. “Uh, no, please don’t shoot me,” he cried, tears running down his cheeks.
“You’re a pathetic excuse for a man, MacDougal,” Smoke said, holstering his pistol as he walked toward the broken man. “Your son was an asshole, but at least he fought his own battles. He didn’t hire other men to do his dirty work for him.”
Angus held his hands out in front of him like he was warding off an evil spirit as Smoke walked up to him.
Smoke reached up, took Angus’s gun from its holster, and threw it over the cliff. He leaned to the side and spit into the snow, as if he were getting rid of a bad taste in his mouth.
“You’d better go on home, MacDougal. To what home you have left, that is,” Smoke said, his voice filled with disgust as he turned and walked away.
THIRTY
Sally and the men riding with her, Louis, Cal, and Pearlie, finally reached Pueblo after a hard few days’ ride. They’d encountered no resistance along the way, which surprised Louis but not Sally.
“There’s no reason for them to be watching their back trail, Louis,” she’d said when he remarked on the absence of any sentries or guards. “They’ve already got Smoke where they want him, or he is already dead.”
Louis had looked at her, his mouth open, his eyes sad.
She’d smiled grimly at him. “Oh, don’t think I don’t know that is a possibility, Louis, old friend,” she’d said, her eyes blazing. “I hope to find him well and alive, but if I don’t, I will survive it.” She’d hesitated, her face set. “I will survive it, but the men who carried this out will not.”
As they rode into town, Louis said, “I think we ought to start with the sheriff. He’s bound to know this Sarah Johnson and where her parents live.”
They rode up to the sheriff’s office, and all got down off their horses and walked through the door.
A rotund man of average stature was sitting behind his desk, his feet up on one corner, drinking coffee when they entered. Upon seeing Sally, the man jumped to his feet, grinning his most engaging smile.
“Howdy, ma’am, my name’s Wally Tupper. I’m sheriff of Pueblo. How can I be of assistance to you?”
“Hello, Sheriff Tupper,” Sally said, equally engaging. “My name is Sally Jensen. I’m from the town of Big Rock and I’m looking for a young woman named Sarah Johnson.”
They all saw the blood drain from Tupper’s face as his smile faded like a snowflake on a hot stove. “Uh, I don’t know any Sarah Johnson, Mrs. Jensen,” he said, his voice croaking on the words.
Louis stepped forward. “Maybe her name’s not Sarah Johnson, Sheriff,” he said. “She’s about this high, attractive, with long brown hair, and is in her mid-twenties. You know anyone fits that description around here?”
“Uh . . . no. Why are you looking for this woman?” the sheriff asked, sweat appearing on his forehead.
Louis cocked his head. “Why would you need to know that if you don’t know anyone by that description, Sheriff?” Louis asked, his eyes boring into Tupper’s.
“I guess . . . I guess I don’t,” the sheriff answered weakly.
Sally said, “Come on, men, let’s go ask around town.”
Louis set his hat on his head and glared at the sheriff. “Tell you what, Tupper,” he said in a low dangerous voice. “We’re going to make our way around town asking everyone we meet about this girl. If I find out she lives here and you lied to us, I’m going to come back here and have another talk with you—and I promise you won’t like the results.”
As Sally put her hand on the door, the sheriff wiped his face with a handkerchief and flopped into his desk chair. “There’s no need for that,” he said in a defeated voice.
Sally turned back around. “Sheriff, I believe this woman has something to do with the kidnapping of my husband. I think she and her friends mean him harm, so you had better tell us what you know or I will have the U.S. marshals down here to see just what part you played in all this.”
Tupper nodded slowly. “You are right, Mrs. Jensen,” he said. “The woman you describe is named Sarah MacDougal, daughter of Angus MacDougal. About six months ago, your husband was here with these gentlemen and shot and killed a young man named Johnny MacDougal.” He sighed and wiped his face again. “I do believe the MacDougals are interested in revenging that death by killing your husband.”
Louis stepped forward. “Sheriff, you know from your investigation that Johnny MacDougal started that fight and was killed in self-defense. Didn’t you tell the MacDougals that?”
Tupper nodded. “Yes, I did, but they wouldn’t believe me. Old Angus, and now his daughter Sarah, has been on the warpath for Smoke Jensen ever since the shooting. None of them will listen to reason.”
“But Mr. Tupper,” Sally interrupted. “You are the sheriff of this county. Why didn’t you do something to stop them from attacking my husband?”
Tupper held out his hands. “You don’t understand, Mrs. Jensen. Angus MacDougal owns the biggest spread in these parts and is a very powerful man. You just don’t go up against him if you want to keep your job.”
Louis snarled and reached over and jerked the tin star off Tupper’s chest, ripping a large hole in his shirt. He contemptuously tossed the star in the wastebasket next to Tupper’s desk. “You don’t deserve to wear that badge, Tupper. You were elected to represent all of the people and uphold all of the laws, not just those agreed to by the rich and powerful.”
Tupper hung his head, his face flaming scarlet. “I know, don’t you think I know that? I thought I had the guts to stand up to Augus. But
I guess I’m not the man I thought I was.”
“Where is this MacDougal ranch, Mr. Tupper?” Sally asked. “And what is the fastest way to get there?”
At that moment, Smoke was riding up to the MacDougal spread, his shoulders slumped with fatigue.
He had pushed his horse as hard as he could, taking a shortcut over the mountains to get to the MacDougal ranch before any of the hands could arrive. He knew the approximate location from the talk he’d heard around the campfire when he’d been prisoner.
He rode directly up to the barn and got down off his horse. Working as fast as he could, he got two horses out of the corral next to the barn and hitched them up to a wagon.
He drove the wagon over to the ranch house and pulled it to a halt. Stepping down, he walked up on the porch and knocked on the door.
An elderly lady answered the door, and looked at him with startled eyes. “Yes, may I help you?” she asked.
Smoke took off his hat and held it in front of him. “Are you Mrs. MacDougal?” he asked politely.
The woman straightened up and looked over at him regally, as if she were royalty. “Yes, I am. My husband and I own this ranch. As I said before, what can I do for you?”
“Is anyone else in the house?” Smoke asked, glancing over her shoulders.”
“Sir, that is certainly no business of yours,” Mrs. MacDougal said haughtily.
Behind her, Smoke could see the Mexican housekeeper appear in the kitchen door.
With a sigh, Smoke pulled his six-gun and said, “I’m sorry to disturb you, ladies, but I’m going to have to ask you to come out of the house.”
“Oh, my God!” Mrs. MacDougal almost screamed, her hands going to her face. “He’s going to kill us!”
Smoke sighed and shook his head. “No, I’m not, Mrs. MacDougal. I’m just going to send you away from here for a while.”
As the two women filed out of the front door, glancing apprehensively over their shoulders at Smoke, he waved them out to the buckboard and helped them climb up onto the seat.
“Can either of you drive one of these?” he asked.
“I can, young man,” the housekeeper said.
“Good,” Smoke said, handing her the reins. As soon as she had them in her hands, he whacked the nearest horse on the rump and the wagon took off, both women screaming in terror.
Smoke walked back to the barn, got a can of kerosene and some rags, and made his way back to the house.
Sally and Louis and Cal and Pearlie rode as fast as they could down the road toward the MacDougal ranch, hoping they would get there in time to save Smoke’s life.
Sheriff Tupper had finally broken down and told them of the twenty or so men Angus had out in the mountains going after Smoke. Sally and her friends hoped to find someone at the ranch who could show them which of the many mountains surrounding Pueblo was the one where the hunt was taking place.
As they rounded a corner, they were almost run down by a buckboard racing down the trail toward town. They jerked their horses’ reins and barely got off the trail in time.
Pearlie scratched his head at the sight of two women in the racing wagon, both of whom were still screaming at the top of their lungs as the buckboard careened down the road.
“You think I should go and try and help them?” Cal asked Sally.
She shook her head. “No, they’ll be all right. This is a smooth trail and shouldn’t give them any problems. We need to get to the ranch and see if we can find Smoke.”
Less than an hour later, they rode up to the ridge overlooking the MacDougal spread, and were astonished to see the main ranch house and the barn engulfed in flames.
“Holy smoke!” Cal whispered as the four sat on their horses staring at the burning ranch.
A voice called from a nearby clump of boulders as a head appeared on top of the largest rock. “You folks looking for me?”
They turned their eyes and saw Smoke sitting on top of the boulder watching the ranch burn.
Sally jumped down off her horse and ran as fast as she could toward her husband, who’d also jumped down off the rock and was running toward her.
After they’d embraced and kissed—and kissed some more, Sally leaned her head back and said, “And just what is going on here, Smoke Jensen?”
He looked down at the burning buildings. “I’m just teaching a man a lesson, sweetheart. He lost his son, through no fault of his own, but then he went out seeking vengeance, and now he’s lost his daughter, his best friend, and his home. I only hope the lesson sticks.”
He put his arm around her and walked her back toward their horses. “Now, let’s go home,” he said, a smile on his face. “I don’t believe I was quite through welcoming you back home when I was forced to leave.”
Don’t miss PREACHER’S JUSTICE, next in the First Mountain Man series, coming from Pinnacle Books in January 2004.
For a preview of this novel, just turn the page . . .
The sky over the Rocky Mountains was a brilliant, crystalline blue. Though it was cloudless now, it had snowed steadily for the previous twenty-four hours, and a deep pack on the ground was painfully bright under the relentless sun. It also made traveling difficult, so the man everyone called Preacher had not even attempted to ride his horse this morning. Instead, the mountain man and fur trapper had taken a pack mule with him, and he led the animal, laboriously breaking a path through the nearly waist-deep snow. The mule was carrying a string of beaver traps that, over the previous several days, had been carefully inspected. Repairs were made as necessary.
Preacher, who was twenty-seven years old, had been trapping in these mountains since he was fourteen. He had a dark shock of hair, which he kept trimmed with a sharp knife. Though it was sometimes difficult to do so, he also managed to shave at least two or three times a week so that, while he often had stubble, he never had a beard. His eyes were dark. From a distance, one might think they were brown, but upon closer examination they proved to be a deep, cobalt blue. He was a little taller than average, slender of build, but with broad shoulders and muscular arms and powerful legs strengthened by his years of trapping in the mountains.
Preacher looked toward a distinctive peak and saw feathery tendrils of snow streaming out from it in the cold, piercing wind of the higher climes. The snow crystals glistened in the sun and formed a prism of color to crown the beauty of the rugged mountains and dark green trees. From that peak, which Preacher called Eagles’ Beak, the young mountain man got his bearings. Thus oriented, he started up a narrow draw until he found the creek he was looking for.
Preacher ground-hobbled his mule, took some of the traps, then stepped out into the stream, breaking through the thin ice that had formed at the stream’s edge. The nearly paralyzing cold shot up his legs as he waded in the water, looking for the best place to put his traps. It would have been easier and less painful to move along the shoreline, but he’d learned long ago to use the water as a means of masking his scent from the beaver.
Finally, he came to the place he had discovered five years earlier, a place rich with beaver that had so far been undiscovered by the other trappers. Since his discovery, he had worked this area as if it were his own private reserve. While there was no such thing as privately owned land here, the trappers recognized and followed a code of the right of territory according to who came first.
Dropping all his traps in the water, Preacher began setting them, depressing the springs by standing on them and putting one foot on each trap arm to open them up. When the traps were opened, he engaged the pan notch, holding them in the set position.
As each trap was set, he would extend the trap chain to its fullest length out toward the deeper water, where a trap stake was passed through the ring at the end of the chain and driven into the streambed.
Finally, he placed the bait. The bait was a wand of willow, cut to a length that would permit its small end to extend from the stream bank directly over the pan of the trap. Bark was scraped from the stick and castoreum was
smeared on the end of the switch, so that it hung about six inches or more above the trap. Castoreum was an oil taken from the glands of a beaver. Once his traps were set, Preacher returned to the tiny cabin he would call home whlie wintering in the mountains.
It was no secret that Preacher had hit upon a mother lode of beaver. Every year his catch was consistently the highest, or very near the highest, taken. While others may have envied him his good luck, they were bound by the code they all followed not to horn in on him.
But there was one trapper who wasn’t bound by this or any other code, and he was determined to find Preacher’s secret location. He didn’t know where Preacher trapped, but he did know where he lived. He had made camp near Preacher’s cabin, surviving the storm just passed, in order to follow him to his secret place.
The recent snow made it very easy to follow, because he didn’t even have to stay in contact with Preacher. All he had to do was follow the path left by Preacher and his mule through the snow.
“It’ll be like taking a sugar-tit from a baby,” he said with a gruff laugh.
When Preacher returned to check out his traps a few days later, he was surprised to see that they had all been removed and replaced by another man’s traps. Angrily, he removed the new traps and put his own back in place. The process took most of the day.
It was one thing to crowd in on another man’s territory. That was done from time to time, and it nearly always brought about harsh feelings. But to actually remove another man’s traps was an affront of the worst kind.
Preacher considered breaking the offending traps, but finally decided against it. Instead, he left one of them on the bank of the stream and placed rocks on the ground in the form of an arrow, pointing toward his cabin, indicating that if the man wanted to retrieve his traps, he would have to come see Preacher to get them. When Preacher returned to his cabin, he hung the poacher’s traps up on the outside wall, in plain view of anyone who might happen by.
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