Power of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “I thought about that before we left.” Smoke flashed a white-toothed grin. “So I brought along enough dynamite to lower the odds a little.”

  Jeff let out a low whistle. “Reckon this is the last go-round.”

  “It had better be.”

  They rode on in silence for a while. By late afternoon they reached the boundary of Benton-Howell’s ranch. Smoke noticed it first. The split-rail fences had been filled in with rocks and dirt, to form parapets; behind them stood some twenty rifle-toting gunhawks, lured by the high money paid and a chance to test themselves against Smoke Jensen. Smoke and his men reined in just out of range.

  “We aren’t going through there, even with dynamite,” Jeff opined.

  “Don’t go off too sudden, Jeff. What we need to do is look around a little more. We’ll ride around the whole spread, and see how much is done up like this.”

  They made it only halfway around the ten sections controlled by Benton-Howell by nightfall. So far it appeared that only a half-section, some three-hundred-twenty acres, had been sealed off. Not all the approaches were covered by so many men. Smoke had led them out of sight of those guarding the road and gate, when they had been able to cross over onto the ranch property. Well-accustomed to the rigors of man-hunting, the Rangers made a cold camp.

  Smoke sat, chewing on a strip of jerky, and took counsel from the stars. After a while, he rose to his boots and walked over to where Jeff York had already bedded down for the night. He squatted beside his friend and spoke softly.

  “I’ve made up my mind. Come first light, we’ll ride back to the Tucker place and send for the rest of Tallpockets’s men. Then I’m going to fix up something that will get us through all those defenses.”

  “What do you have in mind, Smoke?”

  “The dynamite got me to thinking on it. That and the wide gaps along this side that aren’t being watched. You’ll see what I’m doing when we get to working on it.”

  * * *

  Smoke Jensen had added to the mystery by instructing the young Ranger headed for Socorro, “Bring the wainwright from town out here, when you come back.”

  Now, two days later, with night on the sawtooth ridges to the east, the curious among the Arizona Rangers stood around, watching while the wagon builder rigged an unusual attachment to a buckboard which Smoke Jensen had purchased from Martha Tucker. One of the older—which meant a man in his late twenties—Rangers scratched at a growing bald spot in his sandy hair, and worked his lips up for a good spit.

  “Now, what the heck kind of thing do you call that?”

  Laughing at something said inside, Smoke Jensen stepped out of the house and walked directly to the curious lawman. “That’s a quick release lynchpin, to let the team get away from the wagon in time.”

  “Time for what?” the sandy-haired peace officer fired back.

  “Come along with me and you’ll see,” Smoke promised.

  At the rear of the buckboard, eleven wooden cases of dynamite, from Lawrence Tucker’s private powder magazine, were being carefully loaded into the wagon. Baskets and barrels of scrap metal from the blacksmithy and sheds of the ranch were being emptied around and over the explosives, except for the one in the middle. It had its top off, and several sticks of sixty percent dynamite were missing.

  “You buildin’ a bombshell?” the seasoned Ranger asked.

  “I thought you’d figure it out right quick,” Smoke praised him. “When we get done, this will be like the largest exploding cannon shell in the world.”

  “How come that one case is open?”

  “We get to that one last. After the wagon is in position for what I want it to do. That’s the primer that’s going to set off all the rest.”

  “Gol-ly, Mr. Jensen, I ain’t never seen anythin’ quite like this.”

  “Those on the receiving end will wish they had never seen this one.”

  “I want everyone to get a good night’s rest,” Jeff announced as he joined Smoke at the wagon. “We leave for the B-Bar-H at first light.” To Smoke, he said, “Time for another cup of coffee?”

  Smoke Jensen cut his eyes skyward. “If I do, my eyes will turn brown. I’m going to grab a few winks.”

  “Sleep well,” Jeff offered.

  “You know it’s funny, but I never do the night before a big fight,” Smoke responded on his way to the bunkhouse.

  22

  Smoke Jensen saw at once that the time they had taken to prepare for the attack on the B-Bar-H had a double edge. It had given Benton-Howell the opportunity to strengthen his defenses. Instead of penetrating the outer ring of hastily made revetments on the north, they had to go around to the east, because of reinforcements who now patrolled where none had been before. It took some doing, and cost several hours to move slowly enough not to reveal the presence of their force of some twenty-five men and the wagon. Smoke oversaw the operation with patience and good humor.

  “Look at it this way,” he advised a grumbling ranch hand from the Tucker spread. “The longer goes by without an attack on the B-Bar-H, the more restless and bored those second- and third-rate gunhands are going to get. When we do hit, it will shock them right out of their boots.”

  “When do we hit them, then?”

  “Tonight, well after dark, when all of them are relaxed and off their edge. The big thing is to get a hole cut in the outer defenses, wide enough to drive the wagon through without being detected.”

  “We have enough shovels along,” Jeff York added, as he rode up beside the buckboard being driven by Smoke Jensen. “Should go fast.”

  “That is if they aren’t as thick around there as on the north,” a gloomy Ranger commented.

  “Ralph, you always look on the dark side,” Jeff snapped.

  “He has a point,” Smoke Jensen injected. “Even if Benton-Howell doesn’t have enough reinforcements now to cover the whole perimeter, we’ll have to get rid of those on the east without making a sound. Knives and ’hawks if you’ve got them,” he concluded through the scant opening between grimly straight lips.

  * * *

  Darkness had come an hour before and Pearly Cousins had given strict instructions to the gunmen who had accompanied him not to light up a smoke during their time on watch. It was hard enough seeing before the moon rose, let alone to be blinded by the flare of a lucifer. He yawned and stirred in his saddle. Pearly had been up late the night before, and had only five hours’ sleep in the past two days. We’re stretched too thin, Pearly thought to himself. Best be checking on the lookouts along the east side of the wall. Some of them aren’t wrapped all too tight.

  Pearly didn’t find the rider at the northeast corner. “Must be patrollin’,” he muttered aloud. He turned south.

  Close to where he expected to find two of the eight men guarding this side of the defenses jawing instead of doing their work, he came upon a riderless horse. That was something Pearly hadn’t expected. It ignited the first suspicions.

  “Lupe, you takin’ a leak, or what?” Pearly asked in a muted voice.

  When he received no answer, Pearly edged his horse forward and caught up the reins of the abandoned mount. Then he started inward to seek the negligent sentry. He did not go far before he dimly saw a huddled form on the ground. The black silhouette of a big Mexican sombrero two feet from the body identified it as Lupe. His alarms jangling now, Pearly dismounted and crouched beside the unmoving man.

  Pearly rolled Lupe onto his back. Pearly saw that Lupe’s throat had been slit from ear to ear. Stealthy motion caught Pearly’s eyes, as a huge human figure rose from the brush directly in front of him. He heard a soft swish a moment before the tomahawk in the hand of Smoke Jensen split Pearly’s skull to his jawbone.

  Smoke wrenched his ’hawk free and cleaned it on the dead outlaw’s shirt front. He tucked it back behind his belt, and set off for the spot he judged to be directly in line with the ranch house. When he reached the place, he found the other night stalkers there ahead of him.

  “Had an e
xtra one to take care of,” he explained. “We had better get started.”

  Taking turns at the dirt barrier, the lawmen spent only half an hour opening a space wide enough to admit the buckboard. Smoke drove, while Jeff led the mountain man’s roan stallion. The Arizona Rangers and ranch hands formed a crescent-shaped line to right and left.

  A mile inside the outer defenses, Smoke called a halt. “Time to set the primer charge,” he announced tightly.

  With that accomplished, the posse started up again. Smoke had allowed enough fuse for what he thought approximated twenty minutes. He would light it a moment before they topped the rise to the east of the house. Then he would set the team in a gallop, and make ready for the rest of the plan. If it didn’t work the way he expected, if the fuse burned too quickly, then he would never know it.

  “Good luck,” Jeff York said tightly thirty minutes later, as the lawmen dropped back to let the wagon take the lead.

  Smoke Jensen lit the fuse, and slapped the reins lightly on the rumps of the wheelers. The team dug in, the sixteen hooves of the draft animals pounded the ground with increasing speed. They crested the steep swale, and the velocity increased. Smoke snapped the reins again. He stood upright now, a small rope wrapped around his gloved left hand. The rumbling of the buckboard’s wheels drowned out the sound of the mounts of the lawmen with him.

  Closer loomed the mounded dirt that formed the inner fortifications. Smoke Jensen drove straight at the parapet. Flame lanced at the wagon from half a dozen places. Still Smoke remained upright, swaying with the erratic motion of the heavily laden buckboard. The vehicle careened onward. Closer, ever closer . . . the blackness of the hastily erected defenses filled Smoke’s field of vision. He pulled slightly on the cord in his left hand, felt the lynchpin loosen. Anytime now . . . any . . .

  NOW!

  Smoke dropped the reins and yanked the lynchpin.It came free, and the horses, undirected now, curved from the mass before them, the tongue carried between their churning bodies. Smoke jumped free and rolled in the tall grass. Suddenly Jeff York swerved in close at the side of Smoke Jensen. He trailed the reins of Smoke’s roan. Without breaking stride, Jeff flashed past. Smoke readied himself and leaped for the saddle horn. He caught it and swung atop his rutching stallion.

  Immediately they all curved away and outward from the barrier. Five seconds later, the wagon struck the solid wall of dirt with a thunderous crash. A heartbeat later it exploded with a roar that came from the end of the world.

  * * *

  Waiting for an attack that might or might not come had started to get on his nerves. Geoffrey Benton-Howell paced the thick oriental rug in his study, hands clasped behind his back. His eyes cut frequently to the crystal decanter of brandy on the sideboard that formed part of a wall of bookshelves. No, that wouldn’t do, he thought forcefully.

  This was no night to get lost in the heady fumes of the grape. Not any night was fit for tippling until that offensive son of a bitch, Smoke Jensen, had been hunted down and eliminated. Nearly a week had passed since Jensen and the Rangers had cleared out Socorro. It did little to improve his outlook to know that the town had filled up once again with eager fast guns. Most of the Rangers had disappeared, and the remainder had forted up in the jail. He needed to get those new men involved in a search for Jensen. Benton-Howell sighed heavily, almost a gasp, and crossed to the door.

  He leaned through the opening and called down the hall to the large sitting room. “Miguel, I need you in here for a moment.”

  When Miguel Selleres entered the paneled study, Benton-Howell had arranged his thoughts in order. Selleres likewise declined any liquor. He seated himself in a large, horsehair-stuffed leather chair and rested elbows on the arms. He steepled his long fingers and spoke over them.

  “So, you have grown tired of waiting, amigo?”

  “Just so. I want you to take two of the better gunmen and ride into Socorro. Organize that rabble, and set them off hunting for Smoke Jensen.”

  “I thought we had agreed to make him come to us here.”

  “We did. Only I don’t think it is working.”

  Suddenly, as though to put the lie to Benton-Howell’s pronouncement, a ragged volley of gunfire broke out at the dirt barricade that surrounded the house and barn. There followed a moment of silence, then a violent crash of splintering wood. Then the darkness washed away in a wall of sheer whiteness. The sound of the explosion, like a thunderclap directly overhead, came a second later. The shockwave blew every window on that side of the building inward.

  It knocked books from the shelves and set the brandy decanter to dancing. Stunned to immobility, the two plotters stared at each other. Fighting for words, Benton-Howell got control of his voice first.

  “They’re attacking! Take charge of the men. There’s no time to head for town. We have to stop them.”

  “Someone else can go, Stalker perhaps, and bring the others back. They could hit the Rangers in the rear.”

  “It’s half a day in and the same back,” Benton-Howell reminded. “By then we could all be dead.”

  “Or worse, on the way to jail,” Miguel Selleres riposted.

  Shuddering, Benton-Howell dismissed such weakening visions and began to organize the defenses. “Get torches lit; the men can’t see which way to shoot. Are the sandbags in place around the outer walls?”

  “Yes, since yesterday. Both floors.”

  “Have men at every window. Bolt the doors.”

  Sparks from the fuses in single sticks of dynamite began to make twinkling trails through the black of night. The blasts began to rout men caught in the open yard. Some bolted for the covered passageway that led to the well nearest the house. They made it without incident, only to be forced to cringe on the ground when holes began to appear in the wooden walls, as hot lead cracked through at chest level.

  Sharp blasts illuminated the yard, as the dynamite began to explode. Their flashes strobed the action of the disoriented outlaws in the ranch yard. Two went down, shot through the chest, and a screech of agony came from another who had caught a short round in the groin. With a muffled curse, Miguel Selleres rushed from the room to bring order out of the chaos.

  * * *

  Fully a third of the defenders had been knocked off their feet by the tremendous explosion, Smoke Jensen noted as he and Jeff rode through the breach created in the parapet. Dust and the acrid odor of dynamite smoke still hung in the air. Jeff pointed to the rubble of scattered earth.

  “If they’d used gabions, that wouldn’t have worked,” the Arizona Ranger said.

  “What are those?”

  “Sort of tubelike baskets, made of reeds or thin tree branches; they’re used in building fortifications.” Jeff looked sort of embarrassed. “I learned that from General Crook, when I scouted for the army.”

  Smoke grunted. “Good thing the one who built this didn’t know it.”

  Bullets cracked past Smoke and Jeff, and they saw that some of those not affected by the blast had recovered enough to offer resistance. One of the Tucker hands yelped, and clapped a hand to a profusely bleeding wound in his right arm. The shooter didn’t have time to celebrate his victory. Smoke Jensen put a .44 round in his ear, and sent him, brainless, onto the outlaw level of Hell.

  Suddenly a pack of dogs charged into the yard from a run behind the house. One launched itself and sank fangs into the leg of an Arizona Ranger. The lawman screamed as the teeth savaged him. He swung with the barrel of his revolver. It made a hollow sound when it struck the flat, triangular head of the bristling mastiff.

  That had no effect on his grip though. He hung on, his body weight sagging downward, ripping his fangs through tender flesh. Tallpockets Granger whirled in his saddle and shot the vicious monster through the head. It fell away with a whimper and twitched violently on the ground. Another of the beasts, crazed by the explosive blasts, leaped on the back of one of the hired guns. His shrieks could be heard until the huge dog reached his throat.

  “Kee
p clear of them,” Smoke called out. “They’ll do us more good than harm.”

  Smoke pulled a fused stick of dynamite from his saddlebag and lit it from a cigar clinched in his teeth. He hurled it toward the house. It hit the window frame and bounced off. A moment later it went off with a blinding flash and roar.

  More quickly followed from the Arizona Rangers. Two more of the savage dogs died in attempts to attack strangers among the outlaw defenders. Smoke rounded the house and found himself facing two hard cases with six-guns cocked and ready. His right hand dropped to the curved butt-grips of his .44 Colt. One of the gunslingers fired before Smoke finished his draw.

  His bullet cut a hot trail along Smoke’s left side, below the rib cage. Then Smoke had his Peacemaker clear and in action. It bucked sharply, and he emptied the saddle of the second outlaw. Hammer back and another sharp recoil as the .44 belched. It spat hot lead that ended the ambitions of a would-be giant-killer. Smoke chucked another stick of explosives through a window and spun away.

  The blast, muffled somewhat, blew out two walls of the kitchen. Plaster dust and powder smoke made a heavy fog that was all too easy for the hard-pressed gunhawks to hide in. Smoke knew that the noise they had made would soon attract the larger portion of the gunslick army from their outer defenses. He had taken that into consideration in his plans. Now, he decided, would be the time to pull out. He worked the thin leather glove off his right hand and put thumb and forefinger between his lips.

  He whistled shrilly and headed at once for the gap blown in the defenses. The Arizona Rangers and Tucker ranch hands streamed behind him. Only a few random shots followed them. That and the shrill, patently hysterical curses of Geoffrey Benton-Howell.

  * * *

  In the cold, hard light of dawn, Geoffrey Benton-Howell and Miguel Selleres surveyed the damage. Every window in the house had been blown out again. Two walls of the kitchen had been scattered over the ranch yard, and the second-floor extension sagged precariously over what remained. Food had to be prepared in the bunkhouse and the outdoor rock-lined fire pits. Those of the hired guns who remained, shivered in the chill, early morning air as they waited in line for coffee, beans, and fatback.