Trail of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “Draw, goddamn you!” Tay shouted.

  “After you,” Smoke replied. “I always give a sucker a break whenever possible.”

  Tay grabbed for his guns.

  9

  “Your behavior the other day was disgusting!” Ralph Morrow would not let up on his wife. “Those men are dead because of you. You do realize that, don’t you?”

  Bountiful tossed her head, her blond curls bouncing around her beautiful face. Her lips were set in a pout. “I did nothing,” she said defending her actions.

  “My god, I married an animal!” Ralph said, disgust in his voice. “Can’t you see you’re a minister’s wife?”

  “I’m beginning to see a lot of things, Ralph. One of which is I made a mistake.”

  “In coming out West? Did we have a choice, Bountiful? After your disgraceful behavior in Ohio, I’m very lucky the Church even gave me another chance.”

  She waved that off. “No, Ralph, not that. In my marrying such a pompous wee-wee!”

  Ralph flushed and balled his fists. “You take that back!” he yelled at her.

  “You take that back!” she repeated mimicking him scornfully. “My God, Ralph! You’re such a flummox!”

  Man and wife were several miles from the town of Fontana. They were on the banks of a small creek. Ralph sat down on the bank and refused to look at her. A short distance away at their camp, the others tried without much success not to listen to their friends quarrel.

  “They certainly are engaged in a plethora of flapdoodle,” Haywood observed.

  “I feel sorry for him,” Dana said.

  “I don’t,” Ed said. “It’s his own fault he’s such a sissy-pants.”

  All present looked at Ed in the dancing flames of the fire. If there was a wimp among them, it was Ed. Ed had found a June bug in his blankets on the way West and, from his behavior one might have thought he’d discovered a nest of rattlers. It had taken his wife a full fifteen minutes to calm him down.

  Haywood sat on a log and puffed his Meerschaum. Of them all, Haywood was the only person who knew the true story about Ralph Morrow. And if the others wanted to think him a sissy-pants ... well, that was their mistake. But Haywood had to admit that, from all indications, when Ralph had fully accepted Christ into his life, he had gone a tad overboard.

  If anyone had taken the time to just look at Ralph, they would have noticed the rippling boxer’s muscles; the broad, hard, flat-knuckled fists; the slightly crooked nose. It had always amazed Haywood how so many people could look at something, but never see it.

  Haywood suppressed a giggle. Come to think of it, he mused, Ralph did sort of act a big milquetoast.

  But it should be interesting when Ralph finally got a belly full of it.

  Smoke cleared leather before Tay got his pistols free of their holsters. Smoke drew with such blinding speed, drawing cocking, firing, not one human eye in the huge tent could follow the motion.

  The single slug struck Tay in the center of the chest and knocked him backward. He struggled up on one elbow and looked at Smoke through eyes that were already glazing over. He tried to lift his free empty hand; the hand was so heavy he thought his gun was in it. He began squeezing his trigger finger. He was curious about the lack of noise and recoil.

  Then he fell back onto the raw, rough-hewn board floor and was curious no more.

  “Maybe we won’t set up those tin cans,” Louis muttered, just loud enough for Smoke to hear it.

  “Tie him across a saddle and take him back to Tilden Franklin,” Smoke said, his voice husky due to the low-hanging cigarette and cigar smoke in the crowded gaming tent. “Unless some of you boys want to pick up where Tay left off.”

  The riders appeared to be in a mild state of shock. They were all, to a man, used to violence; that was their chosen way of life. They had all, to a man, been either witnesses to or participants in stand-up gunfights, backshoots, and ambushes. And they had all heard of the young gunslick Smoke Jensen. But since none had ever seen the man in action, they had tended to dismiss much of what they had heard as so much pumped-up hoopla.

  Until this early evening in the boom town of Fontana, in Louis Longmont’s gaming tent.

  “Yes, sir, Mister Jensen,” one young TF rider said. “I mean,” he quickly corrected himself, “I’ll sure tie him across his saddle.”

  Until this evening, the young TF rider had fancied himself a gunhawk. Now he just wanted to get on his pony and ride clear out of the area. But he was afraid the others would laugh at him if he did that.

  Smoke eased the hammer down with his thumb. A very audible sigh went up inside the tent with that action. There was visible relaxing of stomach muscles when Smoke holstered the deadly Colt.

  Smoke looked at the young puncher who had spoken. “Come here,” he said.

  The young man, perhaps twenty at the most, quickly crossed the room to face Smoke. He was scared, and looked it.

  “What’s your name?” Smoke asked.

  “Pearlie.”

  “You’re on the wrong side, Pearlie. You know that?”

  “Mister Smoke,” Pearlie said in a low tone, so only Smoke and Louis could hear. “The TF brand can throw two hundred or more men at you. And I ain’t kiddin’. Now, you’re tough as hell and snake-quick, but even you can’t fight that many men.”

  “You want to bet your life, Pearlie?” Louis asked him. The man’s voice was low-pitched and his lips appeared not to move at all.

  Pearlie cut his eyes at the gambler. “I ain’t got no choice, Mister Longmont.”

  “Yes, you do,” Smoke said.

  “I’m listenin’.”

  “I need a hand I can trust. I think that’s you, Pearlie.”

  The young man’s jaw dropped open. “But I been ridin’ for the TF brand!”

  “How much is he paying you?”

  “Sixty a month.”

  “I’ll give you thirty and found.”

  Pearlie smiled. “You’re serious!”

  “Yes, I am. Have you the sand in you to make a turnaround in your life?”

  “Give me a chance, Mister Smoke.”

  “You’ve got it. Are you quick with that Colt?”

  “Yes, sir. But I ain’t nearabouts as quick as you.”

  “Have you ever used it before?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Would you stand by me and my wife and friends, Pearlie?”

  “Til I soak up so much lead I can’t stand, Mister Smoke.”

  Smoke cut his eyes at Louis. The man smiled and nodded his head slightly.

  “You’re hired, Pearlie.”

  “Pearlie did what?” Tilden screamed.

  Clint repeated his statement, standing firm in front of the boss. Clint was no gunhawk. He was as good as or better with a short gun than most men, but had never fancied himself a gunfighter. He knew horses, he knew cattle, and he could work and manage men. There was no backup in Clint. He had fought Indians, outlaws, nesters, and other ranchers during his years with Tilden Franklin, and while he didn’t always approve of everything Tilden did, Clint rode for the brand. And that was that.

  “Goddamned, no-good little pup!” Tilden spat out the words. He lifted his eyes and stared into his foreman’s eyes. “This can’t be tolerated, Clint.”

  Clint felt a slight sick feeling in his stomach. He knew what was coming next. “No, sir. You’re right.”

  “Drag him!” Tilden spat the horrible words.

  “Yes, sir.” Clint turned away and walked out of the room. He stood on the porch for a long moment, breathing deeply. He appeared to be deep in thought.

  Louis shut the gaming room down early that evening. And with Louis Longmont, no one uttered any words of protest. They simply got up and left. And neither did anyone take any undue umbrage, for all knew Louis’s games were straight-arrow honest.

  He closed the wooden door to his gaming-room tent, extinquished most of the front lights, and set a bottle of fine scotch on the table.

  “I know
you’re not normally a hard-drinking man, my young friend,” Louis said, as he poured two tumblers full of the liquid. “But savor the taste of the Glenlivet. It’s the finest made.”

  Smoke picked up the bottle and read the label. “Was this stuff made in 1824?”

  Louis smiled. “Oh, no. That’s when the distillery was founded. Old George Smith knew his business, all right.”

  “Knew?”

  “Yes. He died six — no, seven years ago. I was on the Continent at the time.”

  Smoke sipped the light scotch. It was delicate, yet mellow. It had a lightness that was quite pleasing.

  “I had been to a rather obscure place called Monte Carlo.” Louis sniffed his tumbler before sipping.

  “I never heard of that place.”

  “I own part of the casino,” Louis said softly.

  “Make lots of money?”

  Louis’s reply was a smile.

  It silently spoke volumes.

  “Prior to that, I was enjoying the theater in Warsaw. It was there I was introduced to Madame Modjeska. It was quite the honor. She is one of the truly fine actresses in the world today.”

  “You’re talking over my head, Louis.”

  “Madame Mudrzejeweski.”

  “Did you just swallow a bug, Louis?”

  Louis laughed. “No. She shortened her name to Modjeska. She is here in America now. Performing Shakespeare in New York, I believe. She also tours.”

  Smoke sipped his scotch and kept his mouth shut.

  “When I finally retire, I believe I shall move to New York City. It’s quite a place, Smoke. Do you have any desires at all to see it?”

  “No,” Smoke said gently.

  “Pity,” the gambler said. “It is really a fascinating place. Smoke?”

  The young rancher-farmer-gunfighter lifted his eyes to meet Louis’s.

  “You should travel, Smoke. Educate yourself. Your wife is, I believe, an educated woman. Is she not?”

  “School teacher.”

  “Ah ... yes. I thought your grammar, most of the time, had improved since last we spoke. Smoke ... get out while you have the time and opportunity to do so.”

  “Not.”

  “Pearlie was right, Smoke. There are too many against you.”

  Smoke took a small sip of his scotch. “I am not alone in this, Louis. There are others.”

  “Many of whom will not stand beside you when it gets bad. But I think you know that.”

  “But some of them will, Louis. And bear this in mind: we control the high country.”

  “Yes, there is that. Tell me, your wife has money, correct?”

  “Yes. I think she’s wealthy.”

  “You think?”

  “I told you, Louis. I’m not that interested in great wealth. My father is lying atop thousands and thousands of dollars of gold.”

  Louis smiled. “And there are those who would desecrate his grave for a tenth of it,” he reminded the young man.

  “I’m not one of them.”

  Louis sighed and drained his tumbler, refilling it from the bottle of scotch. “Smoke, it’s 1878. The West is changing. The day of the gunfighter, men like you and me, is coming to a close. There is still a great rowdy element moving Westward, but by and large, the people who are now coming here are demanding peace. Soon there will be no place for men like us.”

  “And? So?”

  “What are you going to do then?”

  “I’ll be right out there on the Sugarloaf, Louis, ranching and farming and raising horses. And,” he said with a smile, “probably raising a family of my own.”

  “Not if you’re dead, Smoke.” The gambler’s words were softly offered.

  Smoke drained his tumbler and stood up, tall and straight and heavily muscled. “The Sugarloaf is my home, Louis. Sally’s and mine. And here is where we’ll stay. Peacefully working the land, or buried in it.”

  He walked out the door.

  10

  Smoke made his spartan camp some five miles outside of Fontana. With Drifter acting as guard, Smoke slept soundly. He had sent Pearlie to his ranch earlier that night, carrying a hand-written note introducing him to Sally. One of the older ranchers in the area, a man who was aligned on neither side, had told Smoke that Pearlie was a good boy who had just fallen in with the wrong crowd, that Pearlie had spoken with him a couple of times about leaving the Circle TF.

  Smoke did not worry about Pearlie making any ungentlemanly advances toward Sally, for she would shoot him stone dead if he tried.

  Across the yard from the cabin, Smoke and Sally had built a small bunkhouse, thinking of the day when they would need extra hands. Pearlie would sleep there.

  Smoke bathed — very quickly — in a small, rushing creek and changed clothes: a gray shirt, dark trousers. He drank the last of his pot of coffee, extinguished the small fire, and saddled Drifter.

  He turned Drifter’s head toward Fontana, but angling slightly north of the town, planning on coming in from a different direction.

  It would give those people he knew would be watching him something to think about.

  About half a mile from Fontana, Smoke came up on a small series of just-begun buildings; tents lay behind the construction site. He sat his horse and looked at Preacher Morrow swinging an axe. The preacher had removed his shirt and was clad only in his short-sleeve undershirt. Smoke’s eyes took in the man’s heavy musculature and the fluid way he handled the axe.

  A lot more to him than meets the eyes, Smoke thought. A whole lot more.

  Then Smoke’s eyes began to inspect the building site. Not bad, he thought. Jackson’s big store across the road, and the offices of the others in one long building on the opposite side of the road. The cabin’s would be behind the offices, while Jackson and his wife and brother would live in quarters behind but connected to the store.

  Smoke’s eyes caught movement to his left.

  “Everything meet with your approval, Mister Jensen?”

  Smoke turned Drifter toward the voice. Ed Jackson. “Looks good. The preacher’s a pretty good hand with an axe, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Oh ... him? ’Bout the only thing he’s good at. He’s a sissy.”

  Smoke smiled, thinking: Shopkeeper, I hope you never push that preacher too hard, ’cause he’ll damn sure break you like a match stick.

  Hunt, Colton, Haywood, and their wives walked out to where Smoke sat Drifter. He greeted the men and took his hat off to the ladies. Bountiful was not with the group and Smoke was grateful for that. The woman was trouble.

  Then he wondered where the shopkeeper’s brother was. He wondered if Bountiful and Paul might be ...

  He sighed and put his hat back on, pushing those thoughts from him. He dismounted and ground-reined Drifter.

  “Going into town to vote, Mister Jensen?” Hunt asked.

  “No point in it. One-sided race from what I hear.”

  “Oh, no!” Colton told him. “We have several running for mayor, half a dozen running for sheriff, and two running for city judge.”

  “Tilden Franklin’s men will win, believe me.”

  “Mister Franklin seems like a very nice person to me,” Ed said, adding, “not that I’ve ever met the gentleman, of course. Just from what I’ve heard about him.”

  “Yeah, he’s a real prince of a fellow,” Smoke said, with enough sarcasm in his voice to cover hotcakes thicker than molasses. “Why just a few days ago he was nice enough to send his boys up into the high country to burn out a small rancher-farmer named Wilbur Mason. Shot Wilbur and scattered his wife and kids. He’s made his boast that he’ll either run me out or kill me, and then he’ll have my wife. Yeah, Tilden is a sweet fellow, all right.”

  “I don’t believe that!” Ed said, puffing up.

  Smoke’s eyes narrowed and his face hardened. Haywood looked at the young man and both saw and felt danger emanating from him. He instinctively put an arm around his wife’s shoulders and drew her to him.

  Smoke said, his eyes bor
ing into Ed’s eyes, “Shopkeeper, I’ll let that slide this one time. But let me give you a friendly piece of advice.” He cut his eyes, taking in, one at a time, all the newcomers to the West. “You folks came her from the East. You do things differently back East. I didn’t say better, just different. Out here, you call a man a liar, you’d better be ready to do one of two things: either stand and slug it out with him or go strap on iron.

  “Now you all think about that, and you’ll see both the right and wrong in it. I live here. Me and my wife been here for better than three years. We hacked a home out of the wilderness and made it nice. We fought the hard winters, Indians a few times, and we know the folks in this area. You people, on the other hand, just come in here. You don’t know nobody, yet you’re going to call me a liar. See what I mean, Shopkeeper?

  “Now the wrong of it is this: there are bullies who take advantage of the code, so to speak. Those types of trash will prod a fellow into a fight, just because they think that to fight is manly, or some such crap as that. Excuse my language, ladies. But the point is, you got to watch your mouth out here. The graveyards are full of people ignorant of the ways of the West.”

  Ed Jackson blustered and sweated, but he did not offer to apologize.

  He won’t make it, Smoke thought. Someone will either run him out or kill him. And mankind will have lost nothing by his passing.

  “Why is Franklin doing these things, Mister Jensen?” Haywood asked.

  “Smoke. Call me Smoke. Why? Because he wants to be king. Perhaps he’s a bit mad. I don’t know. I do know he hates farmers and small ranchers. As for me, well, I have the Sugarloaf and he wants it.”

  “The Sugarloaf?” Hunt asked.

  “My valley. Part of it, that is.”

  “Are you suggesting the election is rigged?” Haywood inquired.

  “No. I’m just saying that Tilden’s people will win, that’s all.”

  “Has Mister Franklin offered to buy any of the farmers’ or ranchers’ holdings?” Hunt asked.

  Smoke laughed. “Buy? Lawyer, men like Tilden don’t offer to buy. They just run people out. Did cruel kings offer to buy lands they desired? No, they just took it, by force.”