Venom of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

“Don’t be too long. As you know, I have a wounded husband that I want to get back to.”

  “I wasn’t the one that shot ’im,” Keefer said.

  “But you did nothing to stop him from being shot,” Sara Sue replied.

  “If you remember, I kept you from bein’ shot.”

  “I remember,” Sara Sue said coolly.

  “All right. Well, uh, I’ll be goin’ now,” Keefer said. The meeting had not gone as planned, and he was unsure of what he should do next.

  As he started down the stairs, he paid no attention to the man who seemed to be working on the hallway lantern. He did recognize the man who was reading a paper in the hotel lobby. It was Smoke Jensen. Keefer hadn’t had any personal run-ins with Smoke Jensen, but he did know who he was. A few weeks ago, when he’d learned that Jensen would be carrying twenty-five hundred dollars in cash, he had given the information to Bemus, Parker, and Quince. He had thought it would be a quick way to earn a little money, and it seemed like a simple enough thing to do, especially with the odds of three men to one. But when they tried to hold up Jensen, the three of them wound up dead.

  Keefer knew that Jensen and the Condons were friends. He didn’t know why Smoke Jensen was there now, but he knew that he didn’t like it.

  * * *

  Pearlie looked back toward Sara Sue’s room and saw her step out into the hallway. “Are you all right, Miz Condon?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “I did just as Sam and Smoke suggested. I hope I didn’t make a mistake.”

  “You didn’t.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  French Creek Canyon

  As Travis had pointed out, the door was securely locked all the time, keeping Thad and the others trapped inside. But every time Thad used the privy, he made as close an observation of their surroundings as he could. The little cabin where the captive children were staying was set considerably closer to the creek than the larger house that was being used by their guards. That meant that if they could escape through the back of the cabin, they couldn’t be immediately seen from the house where the guards were staying. The task would be how to get out the back, as there was neither door nor window there.

  A further examination of the cabin gave him an idea, and he smiled. The smaller of the two buildings was not only closer to the creek, it was also on uneven ground, with the back of the cabin on stilts that elevated it about two feet above the ground. The best way to escape would be through the floor.

  “Travis,” Thad said when he returned to the cabin. “Keep a lookout through the window, will you? Tell me if you see anyone coming.”

  “Why? What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to figure out a way for us to escape,” Thad said as he got down on his hands and knees to look at the floor near the back wall. He saw right away that the problem was going to be in removing the nails. But even if he had a way of extracting them, they were so deep into the wood that he couldn’t get to them. Sighing, he stood up. “I don’t know how we are going to get the nails out.”

  “Why do you want the nails out?” Marilyn asked.

  “Because I want to pull up the boards.”

  “Maybe you could use a nail to scratch around those nails,” Lorena suggested. “The wood is old and dry-rotted. It shouldn’t take much to scrape it away.”

  “Yes, but I would need a loose nail and something to pry the nails up.”

  “Here’s a nail,” Burt said, pointing to a nail that stuck halfway out of a wall stud.

  Thad walked over to grab the nail and try to pull it out, but he couldn’t make it budge. “It’s no use. I’ll have to come up with some other way.”

  “Maybe not,” Lorena said. Walking over to the door, she reached above it, then took down the horseshoe that was hanging there. “Try this,” she suggested with a smile.

  Using the horseshoe, Thad was able to extract the nail. Then, using the nail to scratch around those on the floor, he was finally able to get purchase, and after a few tries was rewarded by seeing the nail come up about a quarter of an inch. A short while later, he had the nail completely out. “Yes! Yes, this will work!”

  “Why do you want to pull the nails out of the floor?” Burt asked.

  “When we get all the nails pulled, we can take up the boards and crawl through the floor and out back. We’ll do it in the middle of the night, but they probably couldn’t see us anyway. They can’t see the back of the cabin from the house.”

  “It’s going to take a long time to get all the nails out,” Marilyn said.

  “What else have we got to do?” Thad replied.

  “It won’t work,” Travis said.

  “Why not?”

  “One of them is always comin’ in. What if he sees holes in the floor where the nails have been?”

  “How’s he going to notice that? He’d have to be looking right at the floor,” Burt said.

  “No, Travis has a point,” Thad said. “I’m not sure how we’ll handle that.”

  “How about every time one of us goes out, we pick up a handful of dirt?” Lorena suggested. “Then, we can just drop the dirt over the nail hole.”

  “Yes!” Thad said. “That’s a good idea, Lorena!”

  Lorena beamed proudly as Thad started working on the next nail.

  Mule Gap

  Keefer was in the Silver Dollar Saloon sitting at a table with two other men.

  “You didn’t get the money?” Clyde Sanders asked.

  “No,” Keefer replied. “She said she would give us half of the money when we showed her proof that her boy was still alive ’n the other half when we turned him over to her. That is, if she even has the money.”

  “She has the money,” the third man said.

  “How do you know?”

  “She made a deposit of that amount in the bank.”

  “All right,” Sander said with a big smile. “Once we get the money for the Condon kid, the others will pay as well.”

  “Yeah, well, there may be a problem,” Keefer suggested.

  “What problem is that?” Sanders asked.

  “Smoke Jensen.”

  “Who is Smoke Jensen?”

  “He owns a ranch next to the Condon Ranch,” Keefer said. “You might remember what happened when Bemus, Parker, and Quince tried to rob him.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Sanders said. “He kilt all three of’em.”

  “Well, he’s here in town. I seen ’im sittin’ in the lobby of the hotel.”

  “You think he might cause us some trouble?” Sanders asked.

  “I don’t know. It could just be a coincidence, but it’s better to be safe than sorry,” Keefer said. “I think we need to take care of the situation.”

  “What do you think we should do about it?” Sanders asked.

  “You two do nothing,” the third man said. “Keefer, I want you and Sanders to get back out to the cabin and keep an eye on those kids. Thanks to Marshal Bodine, we now have a town full of deputy marshals—gunmen, every one. All we have to do is put out a reward on Mr. Jensen, and the deputies will take care of the situation for us.”

  “How much of a reward?” Keefer asked.

  “Five thousand dollars should be enough.”

  “Damn, do we have that much money?”

  “We’ve gotten ten thousand in ransom payments for the first group that we took.”

  “And you think it’s a good idea to use up half the money just to get rid of one man?”

  “You said yourself, Keefer, Smoke Jensen could be a problem. I would rather pay five thousand dollars to take care of the problem than let him take care of all of us.”

  “Yeah,” Keefer said. “Yeah, I see what you are saying.”

  * * *

  “How do you think is the best way to handle it?” Pearlie asked as he and Smoke had lunch at the Purity Café.

  “He’s going to have to go to wherever they are keeping the boy to get the note. When he leaves town, we’ll follow him.”

  “How do we know he
hasn’t already left town?”

  Smoke nodded toward the window. “When he left the hotel, he went into the Silver Dollar Saloon. That bay on the right end of the hitching rail is his horse. He hasn’t left yet.”

  Finishing their lunch, the two men killed time by drinking coffee as they waited for Keefer to leave.

  Then Pearlie saw him. “There he is.”

  “We’ll give him time to ride off, then we’ll follow him,” Smoke said.

  The four streets in Mule Gap were laid out in such a way as to form a three-by-three grid. Keefer rode north to First Street, then turned west. Smoke and Pearlie finished their coffee, then left the café.

  “Hello, Seven,” Smoke said, greeting his horse as he unwrapped the reins from the hitching rail. “What do you say we go for a ride?”

  Seven dipped his head.

  “Yeah, I thought you might like—”

  That was as far as he got before a shot rang out and Smoke saw a hole suddenly appear in Seven’s neck. The horse went down.

  “Seven!” Smoke shouted.

  A second shot zipped by Smoke’s ear so close that it popped as it went by.

  Looking up from his downed horse, Smoke saw four men in the middle of the street, coming toward him and Pearlie. All four men had guns in their hands, and all four guns were blazing. Pearlie went down.

  “Pearlie!”

  “Get ’em, Smoke. Get ’em,” Pearlie called out to him.

  “You sons of bitches!” Smoke shouted. With pistol in hand, he moved to the middle of the street. The four men continued to fire, but not one of their bullets found Smoke. He fired only four times, and all four men went down. With the immediate danger over, he rushed back to check on Pearlie.

  “Did you get the bastards?” Pearlie asked.

  “Yeah. Where are you hit?”

  “All over.”

  “You’re hit all over?”

  “Well, I hurt all over,” Pearlie said.

  Smoke made a quick examination and found the wound in Pearlie’s hip, and he was bleeding profusely. Smoke tore off a piece of Pearlie’s shirt, then stuffed it into the bullet hole to stop the bleeding. By then half the town had turned out to see what was going on. Very few had actually seen the gunfight—it had been over so fast—but the ones who had seen it were talking excitedly to the others about Smoke Jensen engaged in a gun battle with four men and shooting all four down.

  Smoke looked up toward the people who were standing on the porch in front of the Purity Café. “Somebody get a doctor, please.”

  “He’s out there lookin’ at them four in the street,” someone replied.

  “There’s no need for him to be looking at them,” Smoke said. “They’re all dead.”

  “How do you know they’re dead, mister?”

  “Because I didn’t have time not to kill them.”

  “Smoke,” Pearlie said. “You’d better see to Seven.”

  “When the doctor gets here, I’ll see to Seven.”

  “Go ahead. See to him now,” Pearlie said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Smoke nodded, then stepped over to his horse. The bullet that hit him in the neck had apparently cut his jugular vein. Seven’s head was lying in an enormous pool of blood. His eyes were open, but they were already opaque with death.

  Smoke closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Not since his first wife Nicole and their son Art had been murdered had he come so close to crying. Though he felt like it, he fought against the tears and pushed the lump in his throat back down. He blinked a few times then reached out to put his hand on Seven’s ear. He rubbed the ear as he so often had. Seven loved that, and even though Smoke knew Seven couldn’t feel it . . . Smoke could. And he very much wanted . . . no, he very much needed to do it.

  “I know horses go to heaven.” His voice broke, but as he was talking so quietly, nobody heard him. “Heaven is supposed to be a place of total happiness, and I won’t be happy unless I see you there. Run free, Seven, you’ve done your duty here on earth. Wait for me, old friend. Someday we’ll ride together again.”

  Smoke left Seven lying there then hurried back over to Pearlie, reaching him just as the doctor arrived.

  “Let me take a look here,” the doctor said. He saw the little piece of shirt that was jammed into the bullet hole. “How the blazes did this cloth get in here?”

  “I put it there,” Smoke said. “He was bleeding quite a bit, and I figured I should stop it.”

  “Well, you are right about that,” the doctor said, “but I wish you could have found something a little cleaner than this to use.”

  “Come on, Doc, my shirt is clean enough,” Pearlie said. “It hasn’t been more ’n a week since I washed it last.”

  “Well, he was right to stop the bleeding,” the doctor said.

  “How bad is it?” Smoke asked.

  “Doesn’t look like it’s too bad.”

  “Who killed these men?” someone shouted from the middle of the street.

  Looking toward the sound of the angry voice, Smoke saw the one they called The Professor, Frank Bodine. The badge of a marshal was prominent on the black shirt he was wearing.

  “I did,” Smoke said, rising up from the squatting position he had been in beside Pearlie.

  “Do you want to tell me why you killed them?”

  “Because the sons of bitches killed my horse,” Smoke said in an angry, clipped voice.

  “You killed four men over a horse?”

  “It ain’t quite like that, Marshal,” one of the townspeople said. “I seen the whole thing. These two men, that one”—he pointed to Smoke—“and the feller on the ground come out of the café there, ’n them four that’s lyin’ out in the street commenced firin’ without so much as a fare-thee-well. This feller was just fixin’ to get on his horse when it was hit ’n went down. And that feller was hit at the same time.” He pointed toward Pearlie. “So this man—”

  “His name is Jensen,” Bodine said. “Smoke Jensen.”

  “Yes, sir. Well, Mr. Jensen, he stepped into the street ’n shot back. He musta shot four times ’cause all four o’ them men went down, but if he did shoot four times, he done it so fast I couldn’t tell.”

  “Harvey Long is tellin’ the truth, Marshal, ’cause I seen it, too. ’N it was just like Harvey said it was. Them men in the street commenced shootin’ just as soon as Jensen ’n that other man started to mount up. Why, there weren’t even no words spoke a-fore the shootin’ started.”

  “These four men were my deputies,” Bodine said. “I’m pretty sure they thought they were doing their duty.”

  “Was it their duty to ambush my friend and me?” Smoke asked.

  “No, of course not. I would theorize that they saw the two of you in violation of some city ordinance or county law, and it was their intention to bring you in for questioning.”

  “They wanted us for questioning? They why didn’t they say so? Whatever possessed them to simply start shooting like that?” Smoke asked.

  Bodine shook his head. “I don’t know. Perhaps they were coming to question you when they perceived danger and reacted without thinking it through. At any rate, the county has lost four good men.”

  “Will you be needing me for anything, Marshal?” Smoke asked pointedly.

  “No, I can’t say that I do. You’re free to go.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Mr. Jensen?” the doctor said.

  “Yes?”

  “We need to get your friend down to my office so I can cleanse his wound and get him wrapped up with a sterile bandage.”

  “Yeah,” Smoke said. “I had better make some arrangements for Seven, as well.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  French Creek Canyon

  For two days Thad and the others had been pulling nails up from the floor. The work was painstaking. Enough of the wood had to be scraped away from each nail to get purchase on the nail head so it could be removed. Even then, it wasn’t easy to pull the nail. The h
orseshoe could only catch one side of the nail head, and then not too securely. The horseshoe had to be worked around the nail a little on one side then a little on the other, lifting it about a quarter of an inch at a time with each effort.

  Because it was so painstaking and time consuming, the effort was tiring and had to be spread out evenly among all of them except Wee. But even he did his part, often returning from his trips to the privy with a pocket full of dirt. Thad allowed Wee to cover the holes that had been opened as a result of the extracted nails.

  To date, they had extracted thirty nails, which was enough to allow them to pull up three boards. Thad calculated that they would need at least three more boards in order to create an opening wide enough to enable them to slip down through the hole in the floor.

  “Here comes Mr. Reece,” Wee called from the window.

  “Some of the newer holes can be seen,” Thad said.

  Lorena grabbed a broom and just as Reece came into the building, she began sweeping the dirt around over the area where they had been working.

  “Well now, sweepin’ are you? Can you cook, too? You’re goin’ to be a real looker soon,” Reece said. “You could be a real man-pleaser one of these days. Especially if you would let me teach you a few things.” His words dripped with sexual innuendo.

  “You stay away from her, Reece,” Thad said menacingly.

  “Oh yes, you are the one who is goin’ to kill me, ain’t you?” Reece asked with a mocking laugh. “You her protector now? Boy, you pure-dee got me shakin’ in my boots.”

  Thad glared at Reece, but didn’t respond to his taunting challenge.

  “How does it feel, girl, to know that you got someone that’s goin’ to protect you?” Reece asked.

  “What do you want, Reece?” Thad asked.

  “That would be Mr. Reece to you, boy.”

  “What do you want, Reece?” Thad repeated.

  Reece grinned, though there was no humor in his smile. “I got good news for you, boy. It looks like your mama is goin’ to pay the money for you to get out of here.”

  “That doesn’t change anything,” Thad replied.