Assault of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Frank reached into the safe, and started pulling out the contents. He found a money bag and, with a big grin, opened it. The grin disappeared. “Travis, there ain’t nothin’ here.”

  “What?”

  “I mean there’s some here. Don’t look like it’s much over a hunnert dollars though.”

  “Where’s the rest of the money?”

  “I’m just the messenger,” Miller replied. “We don’t ever know what’s in these bags. This is what I was given when I came aboard this evening.”

  Travis stepped over to the open door of the car. “Hey, Dinkins. Ain’t more’n a hunnert dollars here!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You can come in and look for yourself,” Travis said. “But there ain’t no more than a hunnert dollars in the money pouch.”

  “Damn,” Dinkins said. “All right, you and Frank stay with the messenger and the engineer. Wes and me will go through the train and see what we can take offen the passengers.”

  Dinkins and Harley boarded the first car, which was a sleeper car. They were met by a black porter.

  “You gentlemen got no right to be wakin’ up my passengers,” the porter said.

  “What’s your name, darkie?”

  “It ain’t darkie,” the porter bristled. “It’s Julius.”

  “All right, Julius, I tell you what,” Dinkins replied. “You come along with us, and we’ll make this as easy as we can. You tell us which berths have women, and we won’t be disturbin’ them none.”

  They stopped at the first set of berths.

  “There is only ladies in these berths,” the porter said.

  “All four of ’em? The two on each side?” Dinkins asked. “’Cause if I open one of these curtains you say has women, and I see a man, I won’t ask no questions. I’ll kill the man that’s in the berth.”

  “These two has men,” Julius said quickly.

  “Well now, that’s more like it.”

  Dinkins jerked open the curtain. “Let me have all your money,” he said to the frightened man who was sleeping in the berth.

  The man gave him eleven dollars.

  “Eleven dollars? What did you do, hide the rest of it?”

  “That’s all I have,” the man said.

  “Hop down out of that berth,” Dinkins said. “I’m goin’ to look around and if I find so much as a nickel hid, I’m goin’ to shoot you. Now, you want to give me the rest of the money?”

  “Eleven dollars is all I have,” the man repeated.

  After the man hopped down, Dinkins searched under the mattress, but found nothing. “All right, you can get back in bed.”

  He took money from nine other men in the sleeping car; in every case the amount was disappointingly low. He searched one more berth without success.

  When they reached the end of the car, the porter stopped.

  “What are you stoppin’ for?” Dinkins asked.

  “This here is my car. I ain’t supposed to leave it.”

  “You’re comin’ with us through the rest of the train.” Stepping across the vestibule, Dinkins pushed the porter in first, and called, “Folks! We’re goin’ to be movin’ through the car collectin’ the fare.” He laughed. “You may think you’ve already paid your fare, but this is what you might call an extry fare. Oh, and if anyone tries anythin’ funny, I’m goin’ to shoot this here darkie. You got that?”

  The passengers, their faces varying in expressions from fear, to anger, even to a sense of excitement, all nodded in the affirmative.

  “Julius, you hold the bag for us,” Dinkins said, and as they proceeded through the cars, the porter held the bag open, passing it from passenger to passenger to get their donation.

  “I don’t believe this is all the money you have,” Dinkins said when one man dropped a dollar bill into the bag.

  “It’s all I have on me,” the man answered.

  “I’m going to search you. And if I find any more money on you, I’ll shoot you for lying to me.”

  The man stared at Dinkins without blinking and without a change of expression on his face.

  Dinkins stuck his hand in every pocket, but came away empty.

  After going through two cars and getting the slimmest of pickings, Dinkins spoke out again. “What the hell?” he said loudly. “How can you people travel with so little money?”

  “This is all the money my mama gave me,” one young girl, who was about fifteen, said.

  “You travelin’ alone, girl?” Dinkins asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dinkins smiled. “Well now, when you are an old woman with grandkids, you are goin’ to be able to tell ’em that you was robbed by Bill Dinkins. Think about that.”

  Dinkins and Harley reached the rear of the train, then stepped onto the back platform with the porter still with them. Dinkins took the bag from the porter, then he and Harley stepped down on to the ground.

  “Are you finished with us, Mr. Dinkins? Can I tell the conductor we can go on, now?” Julius asked.

  “Get on back in there now, darkie, before I blow your head off,” Dinkins said with a growl.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Risco

  Dinkins and the others came upon a large cottonwood tree standing just outside the town. Hanging from a limb was a corpse. His hands were tied behind his back and his head and neck were misshapen from the effect of the hanging. The corpse was twisting slowly at the end of the rope.

  “Son of bitch!” Travis said. “What the hell is this? I didn’t think there was any law in Risco.”

  Whoever hanged the man did not bother to put a hood over his face, leaving the grotesque visage of a violent death for all to see. The man’s skin was black, though it did not appear that he had been a black man in life. His cheeks were puffed, his mouth was open, and flies were crawling in and out of it. The worst part about him was his eyes. They were bulging nearly out of their sockets.

  “He sure is an ugly son of a bitch, ain’t he?” Frank asked.

  “Does anyone know who he is?” Dinkins asked.

  “I don’t know him,” Travis replied. “But him bein’ all black and puffed like he is, I don’t think I would recognize him even if I did know him.”

  “He’s got a sign pinned to his pant leg there,” Dinkins said, pointing to a piece of paper.

  Frank rode up to the hanging corpse, then, standing in the stirrups, reached up to pull off the sign.

  “What does it say?” Travis asked.

  Frank read it aloud. “This is the corpse of Frank Marlow. Do not assume that because we have no law in this town means we have no law. Mr. Marlow carved up and killed one our soiled doves, and for that, has paid the extreme penalty.”

  “Better pin the sign back on him,” Dinkins said.

  Frank did, then the four men rode on into Risco, stopping in front of the saloon.

  Inside they got two bottles of blended whiskey, then found a table. When the whores they had stayed with before saw them, they came over to the table to join them. The dissipation of years on the line told in all four of them. There was not one who was in the least attractive, and none of them could have been able to make a living in their profession anywhere else but Risco.

  The irony was that they were making more money than they had ever made before in their lives. But the money did them little good, since it cost so much to live in Risco.

  “I see you boys are back.” Wanda was the largest of the four, the one Dinkins had awakened with the last time he was in Risco. Because of that, she established a proprietary attitude toward him.

  “You know why they’re back, don’t you, Wanda?” Emma said. Emma was running her hand through Travis’s hair. “They fell in love with us, and they can’t live without us.”

  The four women laughed at Emma’s joke, but none of the men found it particularly funny.

  “Go away,” Harley said to the women.

  “Oh, honey, you don’t really want us to—” Wanda started to say, but that was as far
as she got before Harley, without getting up from his chair, backhanded her. The sound of the slap was heard all over the saloon, and though Wanda gasped in shock and pain, she neither cried out, nor cried.

  “I said go away,” Harley repeated.

  The four women left.

  “You didn’t have to do that, Wes,” Travis said. “I kinda like havin’ the women around.”

  Harley glared at Travis, but he said nothing.

  “Of course, I reckon if we want the women, we can always ask ’em to come back,” Travis said.

  “We need to decide where we’re goin’ to go from here,” Dinkins said.

  “I hope you ain’t got no more ideas about holdin’ up another train,” Frank said. “’Cause we sure didn’t get much from the last one.”

  “Yeah,” Travis said. “This was about as bad as the bank in Gothic was.”

  “You can’t win ’em all,” Dinkins said. “And we ain’t done all that bad. We got six thousand dollars from the bank in Crystal, and another five thousand from the coach hold-up.”

  “So what do you have in mind next?” Travis asked.

  “I figure we won’t do anything for a while,” Dinkins said. “We got some money, we’ll just stay here until somethin’ else comes up.”

  Sapinero

  It was nearly ten o’clock, and the night creatures were calling to each other as Smoke stood looking toward Sapinero. The cloud passed over the moon and moved away, bathing in silver the little town that rose up like a ghost before him. The main street was fronted on both sides by buildings, more than half of which were dark. The biggest and most brightly lit building was the saloon at the far end of town.

  Inside the saloon someone was playing a guitar, and Smoke could hear the music all the way out to the edge of town. The player was good, and the music spilled out in a steady beat with two or three poignant minor chords at the end of each phrase. An overall, single string melody worked its way in and out of the chords like a thread of gold woven through the finest cloth.

  Between Delta and Sapinero, he had found ten of the DEAD OR ALIVE dodgers, which were posting a five thousand dollar reward on his head. He had destroyed ever y one of them, but he wondered if there were any reward posters in this town. Well, if there were, he would just have to deal with them.

  Smoke passed by a coach sitting in front of the stage depot. The coach was dark and there was no team attached, but it had obviously moved into position to be able to leave town at first light. He heard a cat screech and a dog bark. A baby cried, and a woman’s loud and angry voice cut through the night.

  He rode on through the town, the only one out on the street at that hour, and the hollow-sounding clops of his horse’s hooves echoed back loudly from the buildings that stood on either side of the street. He stopped in front of the saloon, then wrapped the reins around the hitching rail before stepping up onto the porch.

  Two men came through the front door, laughing and talking as they continued the conversation they had started inside. In the lantern light that spilled out from the interior, Smoke studied them. He had no idea what Bill Dinkins looked like, and he only knew Wes Harley by description. “He’s one of the ugliest men you’ll ever see. His head looks just like a skull, with skin stretched over it,” he had been told.

  He knew what Travis and Frank Slater looked like, because he had studied their pictures. He studied the two men as they exited the saloon, their private conversation so intense they took no notice of Smoke.

  He didn’t know who they were, but he knew who they weren’t. They were not the Slater brothers.

  Once his eyes had adjusted inside, Smoke stepped up to the bar. He didn’t call for the bartender, but waited quietly until he saw him.

  When the barman noticed him, he was slightly startled. “Damn, mister, I didn’t see you come in. You been standin’ there long?”

  “Not too long,” Smoke answered easily.

  “What can I get you?”

  “A beer. And some food, if it’s not too late.”

  “It ain’t too late if you ain’t none too particular. We got some boiled ham and boiled taters.”

  “That’ll be fine.” Smoke paid for the beer, then nodded toward a nearby table. “I’ll be right over there.”

  As he was eating his late supper, Smoke noticed a card game going on in a small alcove off the back of the saloon. The players were engaged in an animated conversation and he heard one of them say the name Dinkins.

  Smoke lingered over his supper until one of the four players left the game, then he walked to the table. “If you need a fourth player, I would be willing to join you,” he said politely. “But if this is a private game, I have no wish to intrude.”

  “There’s an empty chair there, you’re welcome to join us,” one of the players said.

  “Thank you.” Smoke pulled out the chair.

  “Wait a minute,” one of the other players said quickly. “Before you sit I need to know if you are a saddle tramp, or a man of means.” This was a fat man with heavy jowls and narrow, squinting eyes. He was wearing a tan jacket and a dark brown silk vest. A gold chain stretched across his vest, accenting his girth.

  “Why do you ask?” Smoke replied

  “The reason I ask is because this isn’t a penny-ante game. I wouldn’t want you to get in here and suddenly realize you was in over your head.”

  “Jim is right. We don’t want to take you in, mister, without you knowing what you are letting yourself in for. This is what you might call a high-stakes game.” The player who had invited Smoke to pull up a chair was a man in his early sixties, wearing a dark blue suit. He also had gray hair and whiskers, and friendly eyes. “Here is the thing, you see. You have to buy a minimum of fifty dollars worth of chips, just to get into this game. If you can do that, you’re more than welcome at our table.”

  “Thank you. I’ll take a hundred.” Smoke took five gold double-eagles from his pocket and put them on the table in front of him.

  “Take care of him, Ollie,” the gray-haired man said. Then to Smoke he added, “Ollie is our banker.”

  Ollie was about thirty, slim and clean-shaven, with a hawklike nose. Like Smoke, Ollie wasn’t wearing a suit. He reached into the chip box and took out a handful of painted chips, in red, white, and blue. “Red is one dollar, white is five, and blue is ten,” he explained, sliding the appropriate amount over to Smoke.

  “I’m Al Frakes,” the gray-haired man said by way of introduction. “I publish the newspaper here. The banker is Ollie Lynch. Ollie is a messenger for Wells Fargo. And the gentleman who challenged you is Jim Saddler. He owns the leather goods and saddle shop, which I think is most appropriate for someone with the name Saddler.”

  “Who might you be?” Saddler asked.

  “The name is Jensen. Kirby Jensen. But most folks just call me Smoke.”

  The three players looked at him in shock.

  “You are Smoke Jensen?” Ollie asked.

  “Yes.”

  Jim Saddler stuck his hand across the table. “It is an honor to meet you, Mr. Jensen. I hope you don’t hold it against me that I asked if you had the means to play in this game.”

  “Not at all,” Smoke said. “If I didn’t have enough money to play, it would have been a friendly gesture.”

  Saddler was the dealer and on the first hand, Smoke drew two pair, which was enough to keep him in the game. He wasn’t able to convert it into a full house though, and he lost to Frakes, who had drawn three tens.

  Over the next half hour Smoke won some and lost some so that he stood at about ten dollars ahead in the game.

  The conversation flowed easily, mostly about the game, but often coming back to an article that had been published in Al Frakes’ newspaper about the train robbery.

  “What article is that?” Smoke said.

  “Well now, I just happen to have a copy of that newspaper with me,” Frakes said. “It is, in my humble opinion, the best newspaper published between Denver and San Francisco.�
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  “Your opinion isn’t all that humble, when you figure that you are the publisher,” Saddler said, and the others laughed.

  Frakes gave Smoke the newspaper, then pointed out the article that appeared on the front page.

  Bold Train Robbery Near Sapinero

  BILL DINKINS GANG THE CULPRITS

  It was lacking five minutes of eleven in the evening when one of the outlaws, believed to be Travis Slater, climbed over the tender and ordered engineer Ernest Gibson to slow the train. Complying with the request the train was slowed, then diverted to a side track where it was ultimately brought to a halt.

  Engineer Gibson jumped down from the engine cab and attempted to escape, but was shot down and killed by Travis Slater. When conductor Martin Kraft and passenger Thad Wallace exited the train to see what was the reason for the unscheduled stop, passenger Wallace was shot and killed.

  The robbers then dynamited the express car and ordered the messenger, Sy Miller, to open the safe, from which the robbers took one hundred and thirty-six dollars. They then proceeded to pass through the train, ordering the passengers to “give it up,” but were able to gather less than two hundred dollars in that operation, making their entire haul for the robbery, just over three hundred dollars.

  What the robbers did not know was that, when the train was stopped, Mr. Miller, anticipating a robbery, had opened the safe and removed a money shipment of twenty thousand dollars, hid same in the express car, then closed the safe again, fooling the robbers into believing the money they found was all the money that was being transferred.

  They fared little better in robbing the passengers, for the quick thinking conductor convinced the passengers to entrust their funds with the Negro porter, Julius Jackson. Jackson, while pretending to help the robbers by carrying their loot bag from car to car was, unbeknownst to them, carrying over three thousand dollars of the passengers’ money on his person.

  The robbers were so bold as to make no effort to conceal their identity, and Bill Dinkins even suggested to Lydia Lane, a young, fifteen-year-old girl making the trip alone, that she could someday brag to her grandchildren that she was robbed by Bill Dinkins.