Trail of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Preacher Morrow had ceased his work with the axe and had joined the group. His eyes searched for his wife and, not finding her present, glowered at Ed Jackson.

  Maybe I was right, Smoke thought.

  “Are you a Christian, Mister Jensen?” he asked, finally taking his eyes from the shopkeeper.

  Bad blood between those two, Smoke thought. “I been to church a few times over the years. Sally and me was married in a proper church.”

  “Have you been baptized, sir?”

  “In a little crick back in Missouri, yes, sir, I was.”

  “Ah, wonderful! Perhaps you and your wife will attend services just as soon as I get my church completed?”

  “I knew a lay preacher back in Missouri preached on a stump, Preacher Morrow. Look around you, sir. You ever in all your life seen a more beautiful cathedral? Look at them mountains yonder. Got snow on ’em year-round. See them flowers scattered around, those blue and purple ones? Those are columbines. Some folks call them Dove Flowers. See the trees? Pine and fir and aspen and spruce and red cedar. What’s wrong with preaching right in the middle of what God created?”

  “You’re right, of course, sir. I’m humbled. You’re a strange man, Mister Jensen. And I don’t mean that in any ugly way.”

  “I didn’t take it in such a way. I know what you mean. The West is a melting pot of people, Preacher. Right there in that town of Fontana, there’s a man named Louis Longmont. He’s got degrees from places over in Europe, I think. He owns ranches, pieces of railroads, and lots of other businesses. But he follows the boom towns as a gambler. He’s been decorated by kings and queens. But he’s a gambler, and a gunfighter. My wife lives in a cabin up in the mountains. But she’s worth as much money as Tilden Franklin, probably more. She’s got two or three degrees from fancy colleges back East, and she’s traveled in Europe and other places. Yet she married me.

  “I know scouts for the Army who used to be college professors. I know cowboys who work for thirty and found who can stand and quote William Shakespeare for hours. And them that listen, most of them, can’t even read or write. I know Negroes who fought for the North and white men who wore the Gray who now work side by side and who would die for each other. Believe it.”

  “And you, Smoke?” Hunt asked. “What about you?”

  “What about me? I raise cattle and horses and farm. I mind my own business, if people will let me. And I’ll harm no man who isn’t set on hurting me or mine. We need people like you folks out here. We need some stability. Me and Sally are gonna have kids one day, and I’d like for them to grow up around folks like you.” He cut his eyes to Ed Jackson. “Most of you, that is.” The store-owner caught the verbal cut broadside and flushed. “But for a while yet, it’s gonna be rough and rowdy out here.” Smoke pointed. “Ya’ll see that hill yonder? That’s Boot Hill. The graveyard. See that fancy black wagon with them people walking along behind it, going up that hill? That wagon is totin’ a gunhawk name of Tay. He braced me last night in Louis’s place. He was a mite slow.”

  “You killed yet another man?” Ed blurted out.

  “I’ve killed about a hundred men,” Smoke said. “Not counting Indians. I killed twenty, I think, one day up on the Uncompahgre. That was back in ’74, I think. A year later I put lead into another twenty or so over in Idaho, town name of Bury. Bury don’t exist no more. I burned it down. 5

  “People, listen to me. Don’t leave this area. We got to have some people like you to put down roots, to stay when the gold plays out. And it will, a lot sooner than most folks realize. And,” Smoke said with a sigh, “we’re gonna need a doctor and nurse and preacher around here ... the preacher for them that the doc can’t patch up.”

  The newcomers were looking at Smoke, a mixture of emotions in their eyes. They all wanted for him to speak again.

  “Now I’m heading into town, people,” Smoke said. “And I’m not going in looking for trouble. But I assure you all, it will come to me. If you doubt that, come with me for an hour. Put aside your axes and saws and ride in with me. See for yourself.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Preacher Morrow said. “Just let me bathe in the creek first.”

  All the men agreed to go.

  Should be interesting, Smoke thought. For he planned to take Preacher Morrow into Louis’s place. Not that Smoke thought the man would see anything he hadn’t already seen ... several times before, in his past.

  11

  Ralph Morrow was the first one back to where Smoke stood beside Drifter. “Where is your wife, Preacher?”

  The man cut his eyes at Smoke. Smoke could see the faded scars above the man’s eyes.

  A boxer, Smoke thought. He’s fought many times in the ring.

  “Walking along the creek over there,” he said, pointing. “I suppose she’s safe. From hostiles,” he added, a touch of bitterness in his voice.

  “I’d think so. This close to town. Preacher? Anytime you want to talk, I’m available.”

  The man looked away, stubbornness setting his chin.

  Smoke said no more. The others soon joined them and they made their way into Fontana. The newspaper man carried a note pad and had a breastpocket full of pencils. Smoke stabled Drifter with Billy and smiled at the boy. Billy was dressed in new britches and shirt, boots on his feet. “Give him some corn, Billy.”

  “Yes, sir. I heared that was some show last night over to Longmont’s place.”

  Smoke nodded. “He was a tad slow.”

  Billy grinned and led Drifter into his stall, the big outlaw stallion allowing the boy to lead him docilely.

  “What a magnificent animal,” Colton remarked, looking at Drifter.

  “Killed the last man who owned him,” Smoke said.

  The doctor muttered something under his breath that Smoke could not quite make out. But he had a pretty good idea what it was. He grinned.

  The town was jammed with people, bursting at its newly sewn seams. American flags were hung and draped all over the place. Notices that Tilden Franklin was going to speak were stuck up, it seemed, almost everywhere one looked.

  “Your fine man is going to make a speech, Jackson,” Smoke said to the shopkeeper, keeping his face bland. “You sure won’t want to miss that.”

  “I shall make every attempt to attend that event,” Ed announced, a bit stiffly.

  Several of the miners who had been in Louis’s place when Tay was shot walked past Smoke, greeting him with a smile. Smoke acknowledged the greetings.

  “You seem to have made yourself well known in a short time, Smoke,” Hunt said.

  “I imagine them that spoke was some that made money betting on the outcome of the shooting,” the lawyer was informed.

  “Barbaric!”

  “Not much else to do out here, Lawyer. Besides, you should see the crowds that gather for a hanging. Folks will come from fifty miles out for that. Bring picnic lunches and make a real pleasurable day out of it.”

  The lawyer refused to respond to that. He simply shook his head and looked away.

  The town was growing by the hour. Where once no more than fifty people lived, there now roamed some five thousand. Tents of all sizes and descriptions were going up every few minutes.

  Smoke looked at Ed Jackson. “I’m not trying to pry into your business, Shopkeeper, so don’t take it that way. But do you have any spare money for workmen?”

  “I might. Why do you ask?”

  “You could get your store up and running in a few days if you were to hire some people to help you. A lot of those men out there would do for a grubstake.”

  “A what?”

  “A grubstake. You give them equipment and food, and they’ll help you put up your building and offer you a percentage of what they take out of the ground. I’d think about it — all of you.”

  “I thought you didn’t care for me, Mister Jensen,” the shopkeeper said.

  “I don’t, very much. But maybe it’s just because we got off on the wrong foot. I’m willing to start over.�
��

  Ed did not reply. He pursed his perch-mouthed lips in silence. “I thank you for your suggestion,” he said, a moment later. “I shall . . . give you a discount on your first purchases in my store for it.”

  “Why, thank you very much,” Smoke replied, a smile on his lips. “That’s right generous of you, Ed.”

  “Yes,” Ed said smugly. “It is, isn’t it?”

  The other men turned their heads to hide their smiles.

  “How do I go about doing that?” Ed questioned.

  “Just ask somebody,” Smoke told him. “Find a man who is afoot rather than riding. Find one carrying everything on his back or pushing a cart. You’ll probably get some refusals, but eventually you’ll find your people.”

  Ed, Colton, Hunt, and Haywood walked off into the pushing, shoving hubbub of humanity, leaving Smoke and Preacher Morrow standing alone.

  “You have no spare money, Preacher?” Smoke asked.

  Ralph’s smile was genuine. “Find me one who does have spare money. But that isn’t it. I want to build as much of my church as possible myself. It’s ... a personal thing.”

  “I understand. I’m a pretty good hand with an axe myself. I’ll give you a hand later on.”

  Ralph looked at the gunfighter. “I do not understand you, Mister Jensen.”

  Before Smoke could reply, the hard sounds of drumming hooves filled the air. “Tilden Franklin,” Smoke said. “The king has arrived.”

  “Pearlie!” Sally called. “Come take a break and have some coffee. And I made doughnuts.”

  “Bearsign!” the young puncher shouted. “Yes, ma’am. I’m on my way.”

  Sally smiled at that. She had learned that cowboys would ride a hundred miles for home-cooked doughnuts ... something they called bearsign. It had taken Sally a time to learn why they were called bearsign. When she finally learned the why of it, she thought it positively disgusting.

  “You mean! ...” she had puffed to Smoke. “These people are equating my doughnuts to ... that’s disgusting!”

  “Bear tracks, Sally,” Smoke had told her. “Not what you’re thinking.”

  She had refused to believe him.

  And Smoke never would fully explain.

  More fun letting her make up her own mind.

  “My husband must have thought a lot of you, Pearlie,” she said, watching the puncher eat, a doughnut in each hand. “He’s not normally a trusting person.”

  “He’s a fine man, Miss Sally,” Pearlie said around a mouthful of bearsign. “And got more cold nerve than any man I ever seen.”

  “Can we win this fight, Pearlie?”

  The cowboy pushed his battered hat back on his head. He took a slug of coffee and said, “You want a straight-out honest answer, ma’am?”

  “That’s the only way, Pearlie.”

  Pearlie hesitated. “It’ll be tough. Right off, I’d say the odds are slim to none. But there’s always a chance. All depends on how many of them nester friends of yourn will stand and fight when it gets down to the hardrock.”

  “A few of them will.”

  “Yes’um. That’s what I mean.” He stuffed his mouth full of more bearsign.

  “Matlock will, and so will Wilbur. I’m pretty sure Colby will stand firm. I don’t know about the others.”

  “You see, ma‘am, the problem is this: them folks you just named ain’t gunhands. Mister Tilden can mount up to two hundred riders. The sheriff is gonna be on his side, and all them gun-slingin’ deputies he’ll name. Your husband is pure hell with a gun — pardon my language — but one man just can’t do ’er all.”

  Sally smiled at that. She alone, of all those involved, knew what her husband was capable of doing. But, she thought with a silent sigh, Pearlie was probably right ... it would be unreasonable to expect one man to do it all.

  Even such a man as Smoke.

  “What does Mister Franklin want, Pearlie ... and why?”

  “I ain’t sure of the why of it all, ma‘am. As for me, I’d be satisfied with a little bitty part of what he has. He’s got so much holdin’s I’d bet he really don’t know all that he has. What does he want?” The cowboy paused, thinking. “He wants everything, ma’am. Everything he sees. I’ve overheard some of his older punchers talk about what they done to get them things for Tilden Franklin. I wouldn’t want to say them things in front of you, ma‘am. I’ll just say I’m glad I didn’t have no part in them. And I’m real glad Mister Smoke gimme a job with ya’ll ’fore it got too late for me.”

  “You haven’t been with the Circle TF long, then, Pearlie?”

  “It would have been a year this fall, ma‘am. I drifted down here from the Bitterroot. I ... kinda had a cloud hangin’ over me, I guess you’d say.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Ain’t that much to say, ma‘am. I always been mighty quick with a short gun. Not nearabouts as quick as your man, now, but tolerable quick. I was fifteen and workin’ a full man’s job down in Texas. That was six year ago. Or seven. I disremember exact. I rode into town with the rest of the boys for a Saturday night spree. There was some punchers from another spread there. One of‘em braced me, called me names. Next thing I recall, that puncher was layin’ on his back with a bullet hole in his chest. From my gun. Like I said, I’ve always been mighty quick. Well, the sheriff he told me to light a shuck. I got my back up at that, ‘cause that other puncher slapped leather first. I tole the sheriff I wasn’t goin’ nowheres. I didn’t mean to back that sheriff into no corner, but I reckon that’s what I done. That sheriff was a bad one, now. He had him a rep that was solid bad. He tole me I had two choices in the matter: ride out or die.

  “Well, ma’am, I tole him I didn’t backpaddle for no man, not when I was in the right. He drew on me. I kilt him.”

  Pearlie paused and took a sip of coffee. Sally refilled his cup and gave him another doughnut.

  “Whole place was quiet as midnight in a graveyard,” Pearlie continued. It seemed to Sally that he was relieved to be talking about it, as if he had never spoken fully of the events. “I holstered my gun and stepped out onto the boardwalk. Then it hit me what I’d done. I was fifteen years old and in one whale of a pickle. I’d just killed two men in less than ten minutes. One of them a lawman. I was on the hoot-owl trail sure as you’re born.

  “I got my horse and rode out. Never once looked back. Over in New Mexico two bounty-hunters braced me outside a cantina one night. I reckon someone buried both of them next day. I don’t rightly know, seein’ as how I didn’t stick around for the services. Then I was up in Utah when this kid braced me. He was lookin’ for a rep, I guess. He didn’t make it,” Pearlie added softly. “Then the kid’s brothers come a-foggin’ after me. I put lead in both of them. One died, so I heard later on.

  “I drifted on over into Nevada. By this time, I had bounty-hunters really lookin’ for me. I avoided them, much as I could. Changed my name to Pearlie. I headed north, into the Bitterroot Range. Some lawmen came a-knockin’ on my cabin door one night. Said they was lawmen, what they was was bounty-hunters. That was a pretty good fight, I reckon. Good for me, bad for them. Then I drifted down into Colorado and you know the rest.”

  “Family?”

  Pearlie shook his head. “None that I really remember. Ma and Pa died with the fevers when I was eight or nine. I got a sister somewheres, but I don’t rightly know where. What all I got is what you see, ma’am. I got my guns, a good saddle, and good horse. And that just about says it all, I reckon.”

  “No, Pearlie, you’re wrong,” Sally told him.

  The cowboy looked at her, puzzlement in his eyes.

  “You have a home with us, as long as you want to ride for the brand.”

  “Much obliged, ma‘am,” he said, his voice thick. He did not trust himself to say much more. He stood up. “I better get back on the Sugarloaf East, ma’am. Things to do.”

  Sally watched him mount up and ride off. She smiled, knowing she and Smoke had made yet another friend.

&n
bsp; 12

  Surprisingly, Smoke noted, the election went smoothly. There was one central voting place, where names were taken and written down in a ledger. There was no point in anyone voting more than once, and few did, for Tilden Franklin’s men were lopsidedly out in front in the election count, according to the blackboard tally.

  By noon, it was clear that Tilden’s people were so far ahead they would not be caught.

  Hunt, Haywod, Colton, and Ed had voted and vanished into the surging crowds. Preacher Morrow stayed with Smoke.

  “You’re not voting, Preacher?” Smoke asked.

  “What’s the point?” Ralph summed it up.

  “You’re a quick learner.”

  “It’s not Christian of me, Smoke. But I took one look at that Tilden Franklin and immediately formed an acute dislike for the man.”

  “Like I said, a quick learner.”

  “The man is cruel and vicious.”

  “Yes, he is. All of that and more. Insane, I believe.”

  “That is becoming a catch-all phrase for those who have no feelings for other men’s rights, Smoke.”

  Smoke was beginning to like the preacher more and more as time went by. He wondered about the man’s past, but would not ask, that question being impolite. There were scars on the preacher’s knuckles, and Smoke knew they didn’t get there from thumping a Bible.

  Then the call went up: the other candidates had withdrawn. Tilden Franklin’s men had won. Within minutes, Monte Carson was walking the streets, a big badge pinned to his shirt.

  Smoke deliberately stayed away from the man. He knew trouble would be heading his way soon enough; no point in pushing it.

  He felt someone standing close to him and turned, looking down. Billy.

  “What’s up, Billy?”

  “Trouble for you, Smoke,” the boy said gravely.

  Preacher Morrow stepped closer, to hear better. Haywood and Hunt were walking toward the trio. Smoke waved them over.

  “Listen to what the boy has to say,” Smoke said.

  Billy looked up at the adults standing about him. “Some of the Circle TF riders is gonna prod you, Smoke. Push you into a gunfight and then claim you started it. They’re gonna kill you, Smoke.”