Trail of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  When he awakened, the first thing he noticed was that the sunlight through the limbs had changed somewhat, shifting positions. Adam figured he’d been out a good thirty to forty-five minutes. Painfully, he got to a sitting-up position. His head was hurting something fierce and things were moving around like they shouldn’t oughta.

  He sat very still for a few moments, until his head began to clear and settle down. He thought he heard some sort of grunting sounds. Adam couldn’t figure out what they might be.

  He got to his feet, swaying for a moment. When things settled down, he looked around for his .22 rifle. He checked it, brushing the dirt from it, and checked the load. He kept hearing that grunting sound. Slowly, cautiously, the boy made his way through the timber toward that odd sound.

  He came to a little clearing — must be two miles from the house — and paused, peering through the branches.

  What he saw brought him up short and mad.

  It was Velvet, and she didn’t have no clothes on; her dress was torn off and tossed to one side. And a bunch of them TF riders was standing around, some of them bare-assed naked, some in their long-handles.

  And there was money all over the ground. Adam couldn’t figure out what all them greenbacks and silver dollars was doing on the ground.

  But he knew what them men was doing. He’d never done it with no girl hisself, but he wasn’t no fool.

  It looked like to him that Velvet wasn’t having no good time of it. It looked like to him she was out cold. He could see bruises on her face and her ... on her chest. And there was dark marks on her legs where them riders had gripped at her with hard hands. Like that one was doing now. Pokin’ at her. From behind. Like an animal.

  Adam lifted his rifle and sighted in. It was not going to be a hard shot, but he had the rifle loaded with little shorts for squirrels. He sighted in and pulled the trigger.

  It was a good shot, the little chunk of lead striking the rapist in his right eye. The rapist just fell backward, off Velvet, and lay on his back, his privates exposed.

  Velvet sort of rolled off the log they’d had her bent over and lay real still.

  Adam quickly reloaded and sighted in again. But before he could pull the trigger, a short gun barked and something hard struck him in the chest. The slug knocked him backward. He lost his grip on his rifle. Adam knew he was bad hit, maybe going to die, but he lay still as the men ran up to him.

  “Let’s get outta here!” he heard one say.

  “What about Steve?”

  “Take him with us. We’ll bury him proper.”

  “Little son of a bitch kilt him with a lousy .22,” another spoke.

  “Let’s ride.”

  When the sounds of their horses had faded, Adam tried to reach his sister. He could not. The pain in his chest was getting worse and he was having a hard time seeing. He pulled his dime novel out of his pocket and took his worn stub of a pencil. Slowly, with bloody fingers, he began to print out a message.

  A few minutes later, the boy laid his head down on the cool earth and closed his eyes. A moment later he was dead.

  Smoke and the others arrived back a few hours before dark. They had pushed their horses hard. Colby and Charlie were about two hours behind.

  Belle Colby met the men in the front yard.

  “I can’t find Velvet or Adam,” she told Smoke. She had been crying, her eyes red-rimmed.

  “Bob met us, Belle,” Smoke said. “Charlie stayed with Colby just in case. They’re a couple of hours behind us. Any idea where they might have gone?”

  “No. The girl has her — what she calls her secret places in the timber where she goes to be alone.”

  The men dismounted. Smoke turned to The Apache Kid. “Apache, Preacher once told me you could track a snake over a flat rock.”

  “I’ll find her trail,” the old gunfighter said.

  He moved out with a swiftness that belied his age. “Stay behind me,” he called to the others. “Jist stay back till I locate some sign. And don’t come up to me when I do find it. I don’t want none of it all mucked up.”

  He began moving in a criss-cross manner, looking to anyone who did not understand tracking like a man who had lost his mind. In less than five minutes, he called out. “I got it. Stay behind me.”

  Apache was following the girl’s sign, not Adam’s, so they found the girl first.

  “Good Jesus Christ!” Silver Jim said. He peeled off his duster and wrapped it around the girl. She was conscious, but in some sort of shock. She seemed unable to speak.

  “What’s all this money doing piled up here?” Moody asked. “I don’t understand none of this.”

  “Twenty-one dollars,” Smoke said, counting the coin and greenbacks. “This isn’t making any sense to me.”

  Then Apache found the body of Adam and called out. The men gathered around.

  “They’s words writ on this page here,” Apache said. “My readin’ ain’t good enough to make ’em out.” He handed the dime novel to Smoke.

  Smoke looked at the bloody, printed words. “IT WAS TF RIDERS WHO DONE IT TO SIS. TF RIDERS WHO SHOT ME. GET THEM FOR ME LUKE. LUKE, GET”

  Smoke read the message and then folded the book.

  Luke Nations stood stony-faced. But there were tears running down his tanned, lined, leathery face.

  “We play it legal-like, Luke, boys,” Smoke said. “When that fails, then we go in shootin’.”

  “You play it legal-like, Jensen,” Luke said, his words like chipped stone. “Me, I’ll play my way.”

  He turned to go.

  Smoke’s hard voice stopped the old gunfighter. “Luke!”

  The gunfighter turned slowly.

  “Charlie told me when you signed on, you rode for the brand.”

  “I do.”

  “It’s my brand.”

  That stung Luke. He stood for a moment, then slowly nodded his head. “Right, Boss. We play it legal-like. But you know damned well how it’s gonna come out in the long haul.”

  “Yes, I do. Or at least suspect. But when all the shooting is over and the dust settled, we’re going to have United States marshals in here, plus all sorts of lawyers and other big-worded people. I don’t want anyone to point the finger at us and be able to prove that we started a damn thing. That make sense to you?”

  “Put that way, I reckon it do.”

  “Fine. I hate to ask any of you boys to ride back to town. But we need the sheriff out here first thing in the morning.”

  Wilbur Mason had walked up. “I’ll go,” he said quietly.

  Smoke nixed that. “You’d be fair game, Wilbur. And you’re no hand with a gun. No, I’ll go. I’ll take the book and give it to Lawyer Brook and tell him the story in the presence of Sheriff Carson. Damn!” he said.

  “What’s wrong?” Silver Jim said.

  “I’ll have to take the girl into town to Doctor Spalding. She’s in bad shape. Wilbur, hitch up a wagon and fill the back with hay for her comfort. Luke, ride like hell for my place and tell some other men to come hard. They can catch up with me on the way in.”

  Luke nodded and ran, in his odd, bowlegged, cowboy way, back to his horse.

  “I’ll borrow a horse from Colby’s stable and pick up mine on the way back. You boys tell Sally I’ll be back when she sees me.”

  “You take ’er easy, Smoke,” Silver Jim warned. “Them hands of yourn won’t be fit for no quick draw for several days yet.”

  Smoke nodded and left.

  Tilden Franklin had tried to sit a saddle. He fell off twice before he would allow himself to be taken back to his ranch in the back of a buckboard. If he was not blind crazy before, he was now. He knew it would be a week, maybe longer, before he was fit to do anything. He was hurt bad, and he had enough sense to know it.

  He also had enough sense to know, through waves of humiliation, that since he had started the fight, in front of witnesses, there was not a damn thing, legally, he could do about it.

  Except lay in the back of the buck
board and curse Smoke Jensen.

  Which he did, wincing with every bounce and jar along the rutted road.

  Smoke had met Colby and Charlie on the trail and broken the news to the father. Colby and Wilbur had exchanged wagons and rolled on. Charlie had insisted on returning with Smoke. He didn’t say it, but Smoke was glad the gunfighter was with him, for his own hands were in no shape for any standup gunfight.

  It was long after dark when they rolled into Fontana and up to the doctor’s office. Velvet still had not spoken a word. Nor uttered any sound.

  Colton looked at Velvet, looked at Smoke, and silently cursed. He ordered the girl taken into his examining room and called for his wife to be present.

  “Tell me what happened,” he told Smoke. “As succinctly as possible.”

  “As what?”

  Colton sighed. “Make it short.”

  Lawyer Hunt made his appearance, with his wife Willow. Mona asked her to assist her with Velvet. The women disappeared into the examining room.

  Smoke had sent Billy for the sheriff as they passed the livery stable. For once, Sheriff Carson seemed genuinely concerned. He knew for an ironclad fact that nobody, but nobody, messed with a good woman and came off easy. Monte Carson was a hired gun, true, but he respected good womenfolk.

  With everyone present, Smoke told his story, handing the bloody, damning dime novel, autographed by Luke Nations, to Lawyer Hunt.

  Nobody heard Louis Longmont enter the office. He stood off to one side, listening.

  Lawyer Hunt read the message and looked at Monte. “Can you read, Sheriff?”

  “Hell, yes!”

  “Then read it and pick a side!” There was hard and genuine anger in the lawyer’s voice. Goddamn people who would do this to a girl.

  “Hey!” Monte said. “I don’t pick sides. I’m the law around here.”

  “That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” Louis spoke from the darkness near the open door to the office.

  Monte flushed and read the bloody words. Now, he thought, I am in a pickle.

  Doctor Spalding stepped out of the examining room. “The girl’s visible wounds will be easily treated. They’re mostly superficial. But her mental state is quite another matter. She is catatonic.”

  Smoke lost his temper. He was tired, sore, hungry, disgusted, and could not remember when he wanted to kill anybody more than at this moment. “Now, what in the goddamn hell does all that jibber-jabber mean?”

  “Settle down, Smoke,” Louis said. Then the gambler explained the doctor’s words.

  Smoke calmed down and looked at Sheriff Carson. “You want a war on your hands, Monte?”

  “Hell, no!”

  “Somebody better hang for this, Monte,” Smoke warned, his voice low and menacing. “Or that is exactly what you’re going to have on your hands — a war.”

  Smoke stepped out into the night and walked toward the best of the hotels.

  “You ever heard the expression ‘caught between a rock and a hard place,’ Sheriff?” Louis asked.

  “Sure. Why?”

  “Because that’s where you are. Enjoy it.” The gambler smiled thinly.

  2

  The news swept through the town of Fontana fast. Sheriff Monte Carson found Judge Proctor and jerked him away from the bottle on the bar, leading the whiskered man out of the batwings to the boardwalk.

  Monte pointed a finger at the judge. He told him what had gone down, shaking his finger in the judge’s face. “Not another drink until this is over,” he warned the highly educated rummy. “If you don’t think you can handle that, I can damn well put you in a cell and be shore of it.”

  Judge Proctor stuck out his chest and blustered. “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Try me,” Monte warned, acid in his voice.

  Judge Proctor got the message, and he believed it. He rubbed a hand over his face. “You’re right, of course, Sheriff. Goddamn Tilden Franklin! What was he thinking of authorizing something of this odious nature?’

  Sheriff Carson shrugged. “Be ready to go at first light, Judge. No matter how the chips fall, we got to play this legal-like, all the way.”

  Judge Proctor watched the sheriff walk away into the night. “Should be interesting,” he muttered. “A fair hearing. How quaint!”

  Louis Longmont sat in his quarters behind his gaming room and sipped hot tea. At first, the news of the money near where the girl was found puzzled him. Then his mind began working, studying all angles. Louis felt he knew the reason for the money. But it was a thin rope Tilden had managed to grab onto. The man really must be quite insane to authorize such a plan. Colby and Belle and their kids were all deeply religious folk — most farmers were. And the sheriff and judge were going to be forced to handle this right by the law books.

  But, the gambler thought with a sigh, there was always the jury to consider. And money, in this case, not only talked, but cursed.

  Big Mamma sat at the back of her bar and pondered the situation. In a case like this, wimmin oughta be allowed to sit on the jury ... but that was years in the future. Even though Big Mamma was as cold-hearted and ruthless as a warlord, something like this brought out the maternal instinct from deep within her. She would have scoffed and cursed at the mere suggestion of that ... but it was true.

  She looked around her. It wouldn’t take near as long to tear all this down and get gone as it had to put it all up. Damned if she wanted to get caught up in an all-out shootin’ war. But sure as hell, that was what was gonna happen.

  That Smoke Jensen ... well, she had revised her original opinion of that feller. He was pure straight out of Hell, that one. That one was no punk, like she first thought. But one-hundred-and-ten-percent man. And even though Big Mamma didn’t like men, she could respect the all-man types ... like Smoke Jensen.

  Ralph Morrow lay beside his wife, unable to sleep. He was thinking of that poor child, and also thinking that he just may have been a fool where Tilden Franklin was concerned. After witnessing that fight in the gaming room this very day, and seeing the brutal, calculating madness in Tilden’s eyes, the preacher realized that Tilden would stop at nothing to attain his goals.

  Even the rape of a child.

  Hunt sat in his office, looking at the bloody dime novel. Like the gambler, Louis Longmont, Hunt felt he knew why the money had been left by the raped child. And, if his hunch was correct, it was a horrible, barbaric thing for the men to do.

  But, his lawyer’s mind pondered, did Tilden Franklin have anything to do with it?

  “Shit!” he said, quite unlike him.

  Of course he did.

  Colton dozed on his office couch. Even in his fitful sleep he was keeping one ear out for any noise Velvet might make. But he didn’t expect her to make any. He felt the child’s mind was destroyed.

  He suddenly came wide awake, his mind busy. Supplies! He was going to have to order many more supplies. He would post the letter tomorrow — today — and get it out on the morning stage.

  There was going to be a war in this area of the state — a very bad war. And as the only doctor within seventy-five miles, Colton felt he was going to be very busy.

  Ed Jackson slept deeply and well. He had heard the news of the raped girl and promptly dismissed it. Tilden Franklin was a fine man; he would have nothing to do with anything of that nature. Those hard-scrabble farmers and small ranchers were all trash. That’s what Mister Franklin had told him, and he believed him.

  There had been no rape, Ed had thought, before falling asleep. None at all. The money scattered around the wretched girl proved that, and if he was chosen to sit on the jury, that’s the way he would see it.

  Sleep was elusive for Smoke. And not just for Smoke. In the room next to his, he could hear Charlie Starr’s restless pacing. The legendary gunfighter was having a hard time of it too. Mistreatment of a grown woman was bad enough, but to do what had been done to a child ... that was hard to take.

  War. That word kept bouncing around in Smoke’s head. Dirty,
ugly range war.

  Smoke finally drifted off to sleep ... but his dreams were bloody and savage.

  Not one miner worked the next day ... or so it seemed at least. The bars and cafes and hotels and streets and boardwalks of Fontana were filled to overflowing with men and women, all awaiting the return of Judge Proctor and Sheriff Monte Carson from the sprawling TF spread.

  Luke Nations had stayed at the Sugarloaf with Sally and most of the other gunslicks. Early that morning, however, Pistol Le Roux, Dan Greentree, Bull Flagler, Hardrock, Red Shingletown, and Leo Wood had ridden in.

  And the town had taken notice of them very quickly. The aging gunhawks made Monte’s deputies very nervous. And, to the deputies’ way of thinking, what made it all even worse was that Louis Longmont was solidly on the side of Smoke Jensen. And now it appeared that Johnny North had thrown in with Smoke too. And nobody knew how many more of them damned old gunfighters Smoke had brought in. Just thinkin’ ’bout them damned old war-hosses made a feller nervous.

  Just outside of town, Monte sat his saddle and looked down at Judge Proctor, sitting in a buckboard. “I ain’t real happy about bringin’ this news back to Fontana, Judge.”

  “Nor I, Sheriff. But I really, honestly feel we did our best in this matter.”

  Monte shuddered. “You know what this news is gonna do, don’t you, Judge?”

  “Unfortunately. But what would you have done differently, Monte?”

  Monte shook his head. He could not think of a thing that could have been done differently. But, for the first time in his life, Monte was beginning to see matters from the other side of the badge. He’d never worn a badge before, never realized the responsibilities that went with it. And, while he was a long way from becoming a good lawman, if given a chance Monte might some day make it.