Power of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  When the quarter hour ended, they had come to the conclusion it would be a good idea to give it up. They had turned on the sidewalk to retrace their steps when Tyrone Beal and his black-and-blue henchmen located them.

  “There they are! Let’s get’em!” Beal shouted. This time they had the forethought to bring along guns. A shot blasted the stately murmur of commerce in Chinatown. A piercing scream quickly followed.

  6

  Hot lead whipped past the head of Smoke Jensen. More screams joined the first as women, clad in the traditional Chinese costume of black or gray pegged-skirt dresses that extended to their ankles, awkwardly ran in terror from the center of violence. Louis Longmont overturned a vendor’s cart heaped high with dried herbs and spices. A sputtering curse in Cantonese assailed him. Bullets slammed into the floor of the hand cart and silenced its owner.

  “Smoke, on your left!” Louis shouted as he triggered a round in the direction of the shooter who riddled his temporary, and terribly insubstantial, cover.

  Smoke Jensen reacted instantly, swiveled at the hips, and pumped a slug into the protruding belly of Ned Parker. Parker’s mouth formed an “O,” though he did not go down. He raised the Smith American in his left hand and triggered another shot at Smoke Jensen. Another miss. Smoke didn’t.

  His second bullet shattered Parker’s sternum and blasted the life from the corrupt railroad policeman. “We’ve got to move, pard,” he advised Louis. “There’s too many of them.”

  “Exactement,” Louis shouted back over the pandemonium that had boiled along the street in the wake of the first shots.

  With targets so plentiful, they had no problem with downing more of Beal’s men as they emptied the cylinders of their six-guns. More Chinese women and children ran shrieking as havoc overtook their usually peaceful streets. Bent low, Smoke and Louis sprinted from cart to cart. They reloaded on the run. Chinese merchants yelled imprecations after them. Blundering along behind, the furious railroad police overturned carts of produce and dried fish. Smoke spotted a dark opening and darted into a pavilioned stall to replace the last cartridge in his .45 Colt.

  A squint-eyed hard case saw Smoke duck out of sight and came in after him—his mistake. His first wild shot cut through the cloth of the left shoulder of Smoke’s suit coat, not even breaking skin. Facing him, his face a cloud of fury, Smoke pumped lead into the chest of the slightly built gunman. Flung backward by impact and reflex, the dying man catapulted himself through the canvas side of the vendor’s stall. The material tore noisily as the already cooling corpse sagged to the ground, partway into the street. It forced Smoke Jensen to abandon his refuge, though.

  “He’s over there,” voices shouted from outside.

  Smoke slid his keen-edged Green River knife from its sheath and cut his way to freedom through the back of the stall. The Chinese owner gobbled curses after him, his upraised fist and his long black pigtail shaking in rhythm. Smoke moved on. Then, from behind him, he heard yelps of pain and surprised curses. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him the cause.

  Wielding a long, thick staff, the irate merchant took out his frustration on the rush of thugs who poured into his establishment. He struck them swiftly on shoulder points, legs, and heads. Two went down, knocked unconscious. Smoke produced a grim smile and moved on.

  * * *

  Tyrone Beal looked on in disbelief as his magnificent plan began to disintegrate. How could two lone men create such havoc among his men? Granted they were a wild, wooly lot, but he had managed to instill enough discipline in them that they fought together, as a unit. Yet here and now they seemed to forget all they had learned.

  “Get them, you stumbling idiots!” he railed at his men, who darted around the central market square of Chinatown in confusion. “They went down the main street.”

  Five or six obeyed at once. Others continued to mill around. They poked six-guns into the faces of the frightened Chinese and overturned their displays of goods. “You’ll not find them that way, you worthless curs,” he bellowed at them.

  He had sent to the railroad yards for reinforcements. It looked to Beal as though the stupidest of the lot had responded to the summons. He had no time to stay here and reorganize this mob-gone-wild. He headed along the central artery that led to this marketplace. Ahead he saw three of his better men closing in on the one called Longmont. Well and good. Put an end to him, and then go after Jensen.

  * * *

  Louis Longmont had a revolver in each hand; in the left one a double-action Smith and Wesson Russian .44. He crouched, eyes cutting from one hard case to the other. Only one of them had a firearm. The other two wielded knives and pick handles. One of those lunged at Louis and he leaped catlike to the side and discharged his right-hand Colt. The roar of the .45 battered at him from the wall to his left. His target fared far worse.

  Shot through the hand, the bullet lodged in his shoulder, the railroad thug howled in agony and pawed at the splinters from the hickory handle that stuck in his face. On weakened legs he tottered to the side and sat down heavily on a doorstep. Believing Louis to be distracted by this, the remaining pair moved as one.

  First to act, the gunman raised his weapon for a clear shot. He never got the sights aligned. Louis shot him in the forehead with the .44 Russian in his left hand. Automatically he had eared back the hammer on the .45 Peacemaker in his right and tripped the trigger a split second later. The fat slug punched into the belly of the other thug. Before he plopped on the street, Louis went into rapid motion.

  A rickety cart piled high with racks of delicate bone china loomed in his vision. Louis jinxed to avoid it, only to feel the hot path of a slug burn along the outside of his left arm. That threw him off balance enough that he crashed into the mountain of tablewear. Cascading down, the fragile pieces gave off a tinkling chorus as they collided and rained onto the cobblestones to shatter into a million fragments.

  “Go, qua’lo!” the owner shouted after Louis, uselessly shaking a fist. Then he repeated his insult as two of the railroad thugs blundered through the ruin. “Barbarian dog!”

  Warned by this renewed outburst, Louis turned at the hips and fired behind him. The sprint of one of the hard cases turned into a stumbling shamble that sent him into the window of a shop that dispensed Chinese medicinal herbs. Shards of glass flew in sparkling array. The largest piece fell last and decapitated the already dying man. His companions hung back, mouths agape, while Louis disappeared from their view.

  * * *

  Slowly Smoke Jensen began to notice a change in the people of Chinatown. When they had recovered enough composure to look at the men being pursued and their pursuers, they recognized old enemies. Shouts of encouragement came from a trio of elderly men on one street corner when Smoke plunked a slug smack in the middle of one thug’s chest. He had shot his one Colt dry and now used the one from the left-hand holster, worn at a slant at belt level, butt forward. Singly and in pairs, Smoke noticed, he and Louis were gunning down the trash sent to kill them.

  A volley of praise in Cantonese rose when Smoke shot a stupidly grinning hard case off the top of a Moon gate. The volume of gunfire had diminished considerably. Smoke found he had to look for targets. Unfazed by this, he continued on his way toward the main entrance to Chinatown.

  * * *

  “Impossible!” Tyrone Beal shouted to himself. It was all over. He could see that clearly. Only five of his men remained upright, and three of them had been wounded.

  Self-preservation dictated that he get the hell out of there—and fast. He didn’t delay. He would report to Heck Grange; Heck would know what to do. These two were inhuman. Nobody was that good. But his eyes told him differently. Quickly, Tyrone Beal turned away from the scene of carnage and broke into a trot, departing Chinatown by the shortest route.

  His course took him to the railyard of the California Central. There he banged in the office of his superior, Chief of Railroad Police Hector Grange. “Heck, God damn it, we got wiped out.”

&
nbsp; Heck Grange looked up sharply, startled by this outburst. “Did the Chinks turn on you?”

  “Some of them did, near the end. But it was Longmont and Jensen. I saw it with my own eyes. We’ve got to do something to stop them.”

  Heck considered that a moment. “We can start by filing a complaint with the city police.”

  “What good will that do?” Beal protested.

  “You’ve got cotton between your ears?” Heck brayed. “Mr. Murchison is a pillar of the community, right? He owns the mayor, the police, the city fathers, even the judges. So you put together a story as to how these two troublemakers, wanted for crimes against the railroad, were located by some of your men. They opened fire without warning and killed our policemen. You follow so far?”

  A light of understanding glowed in Beal’s eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I think I do. We put the blame on them, send the regular police after them.”

  “And when we get them in court, they get convicted and hanged. End of problem. Now, get on it.”

  Inspired by Heck’s confidence, Beal departed faster than he’d arrived.

  * * *

  “Stay on your knees, if you want to live,” Sally Jensen coldly told Jase, the would-be rapist.

  The instant Buck Jarvis had fallen dead to the kitchen floor, Jason Rucker had gone alabaster white and dropped to his knees, his hands out in appeal, and begun to beg for his life. Sally had been sufficiently aroused by their brazen attempt that she had yet to simmer down enough to ensure that this worthless piece of human debris did survive.

  “Oh, please, please, don’t hurt me. We didn’t mean nothin’.”

  The former schoolteacher in Sally Jensen made her wonder if Jase understood the meaning of a double negative. The wife of Smoke Jensen in her made her wonder why she had not already shot him. Driven by a full head of steam, she formed her answer from her outrage.

  “If I turn you over to the sheriff, you will most likely hang. Why not take the easier way out with a bullet?” she coldly told him.

  Jase cut his eyes to his partner, lying dead on the floor. “Please!” he begged in desperation, “please. I’ll do anything, take any chances with the law. Just—don’t—shoot—me.”

  Sally considered that a moment, eyes narrowed, then told him, “Drag that filth out of my kitchen and clean up the mess while I think about it.”

  Gulping back his terror, he hastily crawled on hands and knees to comply.

  * * *

  Slowly at first, the solemn-faced residents of Chinatown came forward. Stooped with age, one frail man with a wispy, two-strand beard and long, drooping mustache approached Smoke Jensen.

  “You were acting in defense of your life, honored sir,” he said softly. “The damage done is inconsequential. I am Fong Jai. It shames me that our own people have not stood up to these qua’lo bandits like you have done.”

  “I am called Smoke Jensen, and this is Louis Longmont,” Smoke introduced the two of them. “You know them, then?”

  “Ah, yes. To my regret, we of Chinatown know them all too well. I recognized the one who led them. He is called Tyrone Beal. He is an enforcer for the greedy qua’lo who owns the California Central Railroad . . . and, regrettably, most of the land in Chinatown. He and his villainous rabble have broken legs and made people disappear for a long time.”

  Smoke gave him his level gray gaze. “Then I am doubly glad we could be of service.”

  Fong Jai folded his hands into the voluminous sleeves of his mandarin gown and bowed low. “It is we who have a debt to you. Earlier you asked about the Triad Society. We behaved badly toward one who is a friend. If you wish to confront the Tongs, the name to use is Xiang Wai Lee.”

  Smoke and Louis repeated the name several times, committing it to memory. It turned out Fong had more to say. “I would urge that you use that name cautiously. These Tong hatchet men are very dangerous.”

  “Thank you, Fong Jai,” Smoke offered sincerely. He gestured around him. “You can see how we handle danger.”

  Fong smiled fleetingly and bowed low again. “It is the Tongs, I think, who should take caution if they rain trouble down on your heads. But my warning comes from another case. It is rumored that the Triad has made an arrangement with the villains of Murchison and his two devil allies, Hobson and Huntley. If that is the case, you will encounter them again.”

  Smoke placed a friendly hand on Fong’s shoulder. “My friend, I—we—have every intention of doing so.”

  “Our great philosopher Confucius said, ‘A wise bird never leaves its droppings in its own nest.’ By arousing your wrath, I believe that the Triad should consider that carefully. Go in peace, Smoke Jensen, Louis Longmont. Ask what questions you wish. You will get answers.”

  It took them less than half an hour to learn all they could about the Tongs. Most people remained frightened of the Chinese gangsters and gave scant aid, and none claimed to know where Xiang could be found. When they had what could be gotten out of the residents of Chinatown, Smoke halted Louis on the street with a word.

  “We have our name now, and some idea of how the Tongs work,” he declared. “Now to get those bouncers for Fran—er—my new place.”

  “Where to, mon ami?”

  “Why, to the dockyards, of course. There are always out-of-work longshoremen aplenty.”

  * * *

  Tyrone Beal stood in the opulently furnished office he had never before visited. He held his hat in his hands, his head bowed, shame flaming on his cheeks as he repeated the account of his ignominious defeat at the hands of Smoke Jensen and Louis Longmont. Behind the huge desk centered between two tall, wide windows, Cyrus Murchison grew livid as each sentence tumbled out.

  “You mean to tell me that twenty men could not stop those two?” Murchison roared. His thick-fingered fist pounded out each word on the desktop.

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “You will be sorrier if you fail again. You behaved stupidly in the matter involving Wagner. You should not have beaten him so badly he could not sign. And now this. Disgusting.” He paused, poured a crystal glass full of water, and drank deeply. It successfully masked his ruminations over how to deal with Tyrone Beal. “I’m going to give you a chance to redeem yourself. You will return to the goldfields. Get me Wagner’s signature on that deed. You do that, and all will be forgiven.”

  Relief flooded through Tyrone Beal. He had visions of ending up at the bottom of the bay, wrapped in anchor chain. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I won’t mess this one up. I promise you that.”

  Ice glittered in the deep-set eyes of Cyrus Murchison and his stunning shock of white hair shook violently. “See that you do.”

  With that dismissal, Tyrone Beal exited the office. When the huge door closed softly behind him, Murchison sighed heavily. “Now, we have to deal with these two gunfighters,” he addressed Heck Granger. I want you to drop everything else you’re working on. Find a sketchmaker who can draw likenesses of Longmont and Jensen. Go to our company printing plant and have engravings made and flyers printed. I want them by tomorrow morning. Then,” Murchison went on, ticking off his points on his stubby fingers, “circulate them to every employee, every informant you’ve developed among the low-lives of this town, every barkeep—flood the entire city with them.” He paused, anger once more flushing his face. He poured and drank off more water and licked his lips fastidiously. “Anyone who finds them is to report directly to you. Then I want you to file a complaint with the police. I’ll contact the chief personally, and get them looking for Jensen and Longmont.”

  “A tall order, sir. But, I am pleased you approve of my idea of bringing in the regular police.”

  “Harrumph! The idea occurred to me before that idiot Beal got the first two sentences out of his mouth,” he said, dismissing the contribution of his Chief of Railroad Police. “Now, as far as your men are concerned, they are to have orders to shoot to kill Jensen and Longmont on sight. Finally, there are some dirt-scratching farmers in the Central Valley who need
convincing that selling to the railroad or to Hobson’s Empire Mining and Metal would be good for their health. Send some of Huntley’s dockwallopers out there to impress it on them. See to all of it,” Murchison commanded. “Jensen and Longmont first.”

  * * *

  “This is going to be harder than I thought,” Smoke Jensen admitted after their fourth profane refusal.

  “It is strange that men out of work, waiting in a hiring hall, would refuse an offer so generous in nature,” Louis Longmont agreed.

  They had spent the past half hour along the harbor. With scant results, for all that. So far, only a single man had taken up the offer. A burly man with bulging forearms, bulldog face, and thick, bowed legs ambled along a careful two paces behind Smoke and Louis. He had a knit sailor’s cap on his huge head, canvas trousers, and a blue-and-white-striped V-neck pullover. Smoke privately suspected he was not a longshoreman, but that he had recently jumped ship. He would do, though.

  “Over there,” Louis pointed out. Two men sat astraddle a bench, a checkerboard between them. As Smoke approached, one picked up a black playing piece and made a triple jump.

  “You’re cheatin’, Luke,” his opponent growled. “I don’t know how, but I know you are.”

  “No, I ain’t,” Luke responded. “You just make too many mistakes.”

  “I don’t make mistakes.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Do.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Now, boys,” Smoke addressed them, in a tone he often heard Sally use on their children when they squabbled.

  It brought up the both of them, red-faced, their disagreement forgotten. Luke gestured to the playing board. “Doin’ nothin’ for days on end gets to a feller,” he apologized for them both.

  “Out of work?” Smoke suggested.

  “Sure am. We refused to turn back half our pay to the hall boss.”

  “Would you like to take a job?”

  Luke studied the blue sky above. His eyes wandered to a wheeling dove. “Sure, if we get to keep what we earn and it ain’t again’ the law.”