Trail of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Smoke rolled to the wall of the stall, reloaded the express gun, and jumped over the stall divider, into the next stall. His ears were still ringing from the tremendous booming of the sawed-off.

  Quietly, he removed his spurs and laid them to one side.

  He heard someone cursing, then someone else said, “Jensen shot him where he lived. That ain’t right.”

  The mangled man had ceased his howling, dying on the stable floor.

  Smoke waited.

  As he had expected, Sheriff Monte Carson was making no effort to interfere with the ambush.

  So much for the new law and order in Fontana.

  Smoke waited, motionless, his callused hands gripping the express gun. His mentor, Preacher, had taught Smoke well, teaching him, among other things, patience.

  One of Tilden’s gunhands lost his patience and began tossing lead around where he suspected Smoke to be. He was way off target. But Smoke wasn’t.

  Smoke blew the man out of the loft, the loads taking him in the belly, knocking him backward. He rolled and thrashed and screamed the pain finally rolling him off the edge and dropping him to the ground floor.

  Smoke heard one man jump from the loft and take off running. The others ran out the back and disappeared.

  Smoke waited for a long ten-count, then slipped out the front door. He made sure all watching saw him reload the sawed-off shotgun. Then he walked straight up the dusty street to where Tilden and Monte were standing. Still in the street, Smoke wondered where Clint had gotten off to. No matter. Clint might ride for a sorry no-account, but the man was not a backshooter. Smoke knew that much about him.

  Looking straight at Tilden, Smoke said, “Two of your men are on the stable floor. One is dead and I imagine the other won’t live long the way he’s shot. Your other hands lost their nerve and ran. Maybe you told them to ambush me, maybe you didn’t. I don’t know. So I won’t accuse you of it.”

  Tilden stood still, smoking a thin cigar. But his eyes were filled with silent rage and hate.

  Smoke looked at Monte. “You got anything you want to say to me, Sheriff?”

  Monte wanted desperately to look at Tilden for some sign. But he was afraid to take his eyes off Smoke. He finally shook his head. “I reckon not.”

  “Fine.” Smoke looked at Tilden. “See you ’round, Franklin.” He knew the man despised to be called by his last name.

  Smoke turned and walked to Louis Longmont’s place. He handed Louis the shotgun and walked across the street to join the Easterners.

  “Go get my horse, Billy. And stay out of the barn until someone cleans up the mess.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Is that ... it?” Hunt asked.

  “That’s it, Lawyer,” Smoke told him. “Out here, for the time being, justice is very swift and short.”

  Smoke looked at Ed Jackson.

  “I’d suggest you bear that in mind,” Smoke told him.

  14

  Tilden sat at a table in a saloon. By himself. The kingpin rancher was in a blue funk and everybody knew it. So they wisely left him alone.

  Those six gunhands he’d sent to ambush Jensen were among the best he’d had on his payroll. And they’d failed. And to make matters worse, Jensen had made Tilden look like a fool ... in front of Monte and countless others who were hiding nearby.

  Intolerable.

  Tilden emptied his shot glass and refilled it from the bottle. Lifting the shot glass filled with the amber liquid to his lips, Tilden glanced down at the bottle. More than half empty. That too was intolerable. Tilden was not a heavy-drinking man, not a man who liked his thoughts muddled.

  He set the shot glass on the table and pushed it from him. He looked up as one of his punchers — he couldn’t remember the man’s name and that irritated him further — entered the saloon and walked quickly up to Clint, whispering in the foreman’s ear.

  The foreman stiffened and gave the man a dark look, then cut his eyes to Tilden.

  Tilden Franklin rose from the table and walked to Clint and the cowboy. “Outside,” he said.

  In the shade offered by the awning, the men stood on the boardwalk. “Say it,” Tilden ordered the cowboy-gunhand.

  “Lefty and five others went over to the Sugarloaf to drag Pearlie. Only one come back and he was shot up pretty bad. He said they drug Pearlie a pretty fair distance and then shot him in the head. But he ain’t dead, boss. And they was two people at Jensen’s spread. Both of them trigger-pullers.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Tilden cursed low.

  “And that ain’t all, boss. Billy was over to our western range drivin’ the beeves back to the lower slopes. He seen a campfire, smelled beans cookin’. Billy taken off over there to run whoever it was off the range. When he got there, he changed his mind. It was Charlie Starr.”

  Tilden thought about that for a few seconds. He didn’t believe it. Last word he’d had of Charlie Starr was five, six year back, and that news had been that Starr had been killed in a gunfight up in Montana.

  He said as much.

  The puncher shook his head. “Billy seen Charlie over in Nevada, at Mormon Station, seven, eight years ago. That’s when Charlie kilt them four gunslicks. Billy bought Charlie a drink after that, and they talked for nearabouts an hour. You’ve heard Billy brag about that, boss. It ain’t likely he’d forget Charlie Starr.”

  Tilden nodded his head in agreement. It was not very likely. Charlie Starr. Mean as a snake and just as notional as a grizzly bear. Wore two guns, tied down low, and was just as good with one as the other. Charlie had been a number of things: stagecoach guard, deputy, marshal, gambler, outlaw, gunfighter, bounty hunter, miner ... and a lot of other things.

  Charlie was ... had to be close to fifty years old. But Tilden doubted that age would have slowed him down much. If any.

  And Charlie Starr hated Tilden Franklin.

  As if reading his thoughts, Clint said, “You don’t think ...”

  “I don’t know, Clint.” He dismissed the cowboy and told him to get a drink. When the batwings had swallowed the cowboy, Tilden said, “That was more than fifteen years ago, Clint. Seventeen years to be exact. I was twenty-three years old and full of piss and vinegar. I didn’t know that woman belonged to Charlie. Damnit, she didn’t tell me she did. Rubbing all over me, tickling my ear. I had just ramrodded a herd up from Texas and was hard-drinkin’ back then.” He sighed. “I got drunk, Clint. I’ve told you that much before. What I haven’t told you was that I got a little rough with the woman later on. She died. I thought she liked it rough. Lots of women do, you know. Anyway, I got the word that Charlie Starr was gunning for me. I ordered my boys to rope him and drag the meanness out of him. They got a little carried away with the fun and hurt him bad. He was, so I’m told, a long time recovering from it. Better part of a year. Word got back to me over the years that Charlie had made his brag he was going to brace me and kill me.”

  “I seen him up on the Roaring Fork nine, ten years ago,” Clint said. “Luis Chamba and that Medicine Bow gunslick braced him. Chamba took a lot of lead, but he lived. The other one didn’t.”

  “Where is Chamba?”

  “Utah, last I heard.”

  “Send a rider. Get him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was full dark when Smoke saw the lights shining from the windows of the cabin. He had pushed Horse hard, and the big stallion was tired, but game. Smoke rubbed him down, gave him an extra ration of corn, and turned him loose to roll.

  When he opened the door to the cabin and saw Pearlie’s battered and torn face, his own face tightened.

  “He’ll tell you over dinner,” Sally said. “Wash up and I’ll fix you a plate.”

  Over a heaping plate of beef and potatoes and gravy and beans flavored with honey, with bearsign for dessert, Pearlie told his story while Smoke ate.

  “If there was any law worth a damn in this country I could have Tilden arrested,” Smoke said, chewing thoughtfully.

  “I don’t even know
where the county lines are,” Pearlie said. He would have liked another doughnut, but he’d already eaten twenty that day and was ashamed to ask for another.

  With a smile, Sally pushed the plate of bearsign toward him.

  “Well,” Pearlie said. “Maybe just one more.”

  “What county does our land lie in, Smoke?” Sally asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure. It might be split in half. And that’s something to think about. But . . . I don’t know. You can bet that when it comes to little farmers and little ranchers up against kingpins like Tilden, the law is going to side with the big boys. Might be wiser just to keep the law out of this altogether.”

  “I thought you folks had bought most of your land and filed on the rest?” Pearlie said.

  “We have,” Smoke told him. “And it’s been checked and it’s all legal. But they surveyed again a couple of years ago and drew up new lines. I never heard anymore about it.”

  “Mister Smoke?” Bob asked, from a chair away from the adults.

  “Yes, Bob?”

  “Who is Charlie Starr?”

  Smoke sopped up the last of his gravy with a thick hunk of bread and chewed for a moment. “He’s a gunfighter, Bob. He’s been a lot of things, but mostly he’s a good man. But a strange one. I met him while I was riding with an old Mountain Man called Preacher. Why do you ask?”

  “I heard them Jones boys talkin’ last week. When we was all gathered over to the Matlocks’ for Sunday services. That feller who sometimes works for Mister Matlock said Charlie Starr’s been camped out around this country for a month or so.”

  “I can’t believe Charlie is in here to hire his gun out to Tilden. He never has hired his guns out against a little man. He’s done a lot of things, but he kinda backed into his rep as a gunslick. Maybe that fellow was mistaken?”

  “Maybe, Mister Smoke.”

  Charlie Starr shifted his blankets away from his fire and settled in for the night. He smiled in the darkness, the sounds of his horse cropping grass a somehow comforting sound in the night. Since that puncher had come up on him, he’d moved his location — out of, he thought, the TF range. High up in the mountains, where snow was still capping the crests, above some place called the Sugarloaf. Nice-sounding name, Charlie thought.

  Louis Longmont sat at a table playing stud, winning, as usual. Winning even though his thoughs were not entirely on the game. He’d just that evening heard the rumors that Charlie Starr was in the area, and heard too that Tilden Franklin had sent a rider to Utah to get Luis Chamba, the Sonora gunslick. And he’d heard that Tilden was building up his own forces by half a hundred riders.

  Louis pulling in his winnings and excused himself from the game. His mind wasn’t on it and he needed a breath of air. He walked outside, into the rambunctious, boom-town night air. The town was growing by hundreds each day. Most of the men were miners or would-be miners, but there was a lot of trash mixed in as well.

  With this many people working the area, the town might last, Louis thought, six months — maybe less. There was a strong urge within the man to just fold his tent and pull out. Louis felt there would be a bloodbath before everything was said and done.

  But Louis couldn’t do that. He’d given his word to Preacher he’d look in on Smoke from time to time. Not that Smoke needed any looking after, Louis thought with a grin. But a man’s word was his bond. So Louis would see it through. He tossed his cigar into the street and walked back into his gaming tent.

  Tilden Franklin sat alone in his huge house, his thoughts as savage as much of the land that lay around him. His thoughts would have made a grizzly flinch. Tilden had never seen a woman that he desired more than Sally Jensen. Educated, aloof, beautiful. Tilden wondered how she’d look with her dress on the floor.

  He shook that thought from him.

  Then, with a faint smile curving his lips, he thought about the nester Colby. More specifically, Colby’s daughter. Velvet.

  Tilden laughed. He thought he knew how to get rid of that nester, and let his boys have some fun in the process.

  Yeah. He’d give it some extra thought in the morning. But it seemed like a pretty good idea.

  Billy lay on the hay in the loft, in his longjohns, his new clothing carefully folded and stored on a little ledge. His thoughts were of Smoke. Billy wondered how it would be to have a pa like Smoke. Probably real nice. There was a streak of gentleness in the gunfighter that few adults could see. But a kid could see it right off. Smoke for a pa. Well, it was something to dream about. One thing for sure, nobody would mess with you, leastways.

  Ed Jackson lay by his wife’s side and mentally counted all the money he was going to make. He’d hired some rough-looking men that day, promising them a grubstake if they’d build his store for him. They had accepted. Ed Jackson dreamed of great wealth. Ed Jackson dreamed of becoming a very important person. Maybe even someone like Tilden Franklin.

  Now there was a really important man.

  Paul Jackson lay in his blankets under a wagon. He was restless, sleep was elusive. He kept thinking about the way Bountiful had looked at him. Something was building between them, he just knew it. And Paul also knew that he wasn’t going to hang around here with his stupid, greedy brother any longer than necessary. If he could find gold, that would really make Bountiful sit up and take notice of him.

  He grinned.

  Or lay down and take notice of him.

  Dana lay by her husband, listening to him breathe as he slept. She wondered if they’d made a mistake in coming out West. Haywood didn’t think so, but she’d wondered often about it, especially during the last few days. These men out here, they took violent death so ... so calmly. It frightened her.

  Colton closed up his tent and put his money, some of it in gold dust, into a lockbox and carefully stowed it away in the hidden compartment under the wagon. He was tired, but he’d made more money in just two days than most physicians back East made in a month — maybe two months. If this kept up, he’d have enough to travel on to California and set up a practice in real style. In a place that had some class, with a theater and opera and all the rest that civilized people craved. At this rate, he’d have far more than enough in a year’s time.

  He washed his hands and made ready for bed.

  Hunt was wide awake, his thoughts many and most of them confused. True, he’d been busy all day handling gold claims, but no one had come to him for any legal advice concerning the many fights and stabbings and occasional shootings that occurred within the town of Fontana. He simply could not understand that. Didn’t these people understand due process? All those fistfights and gunfights. It was positively barbaric. And so needless. All people had to do was come see him; then they could handle it in a proper court of law.

  If, Hunt thought with a grimace, they could find the judge when he was sober.

  15

  Leaving Pearlie with Sally, Smoke escorted Bob back to his home. For the first time since arriving in the area, Smoke saw both Wilbur Mason and Colby armed with short guns and rifles. Dismounting, Smoke ground-reined Drifter and faced the farmer-ranchers.

  “Seen any of the others?” Smoke asked.

  “Nolan rode by yesterday evenin’,” Colby said. “He’s scared and admitted it.”

  “Ray and Betty sent word that they’re with us all the way,” Mason said.

  “How about Peyton?”

  Both men shrugged.

  “I think he’ll stand,” Smoke said. “Way he talked to me the other day, he’ll stick. How’s your food supply?”

  “Plenty. The old woman canned enough last summer to last us for a good long time. Potato bin’s half full. What’s your plans, Smoke?”

  Smoke brought them both up to date. Then he said, “I’m staying close to home. Shifting my cattle to a different graze. But if I need something in the way of supplies, nothing or nobody will keep me out of Fontana.”

  “When you decide to go in,” Colby said, “I’ll take my wagon and go in with you.
The two of us can get supplies for everybody.”

  “Sounds good. We don’t want to leave the whole area without menfolks. I’m going to talk with the others today. Get a better idea of where they stand. I’ll see you both later on.”

  Velvet came out of the house and walked to the well. Smoke’s eyes followed her. She was a young girl, but built up like a grown woman. And that worried Smoke. Tilden was ruthless, might do anything. And some of the gunslicks riding for the TF brand were nothing more than pure white trash. They’d do anything Tilden ordered. While most Western men would not bother a good woman, there were always exceptions.

  Colby had followed Smoke’s eyes. “I still think you’re wrong, Smoke. She’s just a child.”

  “Tilden Franklin is a sorry son of a bitch,” Smoke told the men. “Don’t put anything past him.” He swung into the saddle. “See you boys later.”

  Smoke rode hard that day, stopping in to see all the small outfits he thought might throw in with him and the others. And he had been correct in his thinking. Steve and Mike and Nolan and Ray all agreed to toss in, forming an alliance among all the small spreads. If one got hit, the others would respond.

  Their lives and money were sunk deep into this land, and with many, some of their blood as well. They were not going to run.

  “What’s this talk about Charlie Starr, Smoke?” Nolan asked.

  “So far as I know, just that — talk.” He told the man what he knew about Starr. “I think, if he is in this area, he’s here to kill Tilden Franklin. Lots of bad blood between those two. Goes back years, so the story goes. I’m going to try to pin the rumor down. When I do, I’ll get back with you. Stay loose, Nolan, and keep an eye on your womenfolk. I have no way of knowing exactly what Tilden has in mind, but whatever it is, it’s bad news for us, that’s for sure.”