Venom of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  “It doesn’t change anything? Didn’t you hear what I said? I said your mama is goin’ to pay us to set you free.”

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

  “You mean you still plan to kill me?”

  Thad glared at Reece, but he didn’t respond.

  “Well, I just come in to tell you the good news,” Reece said. “Little lady, you just go back to sweepin’. From all the dirt on the floor in here, it looks like it needs it.” He left, and the others turned to look at Thad.

  “Are you going to go home?” Travis asked.

  “Yeah, I’m going home,” Thad replied. Then he smiled. “We are all going home. I’m not leaving here until we all leave here.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t leave us!” Burt said with a happy smile.

  “We need to do this a little faster,” Thad said. “Let’s all work on the nails at the same time. We’ve pulled enough nails we can use them to scrape around the nails we haven’t pulled yet.

  “Me too?” Wee asked.

  “No, you keep doing just what you were doing,” Thad said. “You did a good job, Wee, warning us about Reece. I’m proud of you.”

  A pleased smile spread across Wee’s face, and he went back over to stand on the box that let him look through the window.

  “Let’s get to work,” Thad said to the others.

  * * *

  Fancy Bliss, Joy Love, and Candy Sweet were riding in the buckboard being driven by Clyde Sanders when it arrived at the house and cabin located on the bank of French Creek. Delilah Dupree had agreed to let them make a client visit, at double the cost of what their services would have been at the House of Pleasure.

  As they arrived, they saw a young girl standing in front of a privy.

  “Oh,” Fancy said. “There are children here?”

  “Don’t worry none about it,” Sanders said. “They’re all stayin’ in that little cabin. They won’t have nothin’ to do with our business.”

  “What do you mean, all are staying in that little cabin? How many are there?”

  “They’s six of ’em now, but if it all works out, there’ll only be five pretty soon. Maybe we can get rid of the others, too.”

  “Get rid of them? What are you talking about? Why are the children here?” Fancy asked.

  “You ask too many questions,” Sanders said. “We ain’t payin’ you women to come out here just so we would have someone to talk to. Now, get on into the big house ’n let’s get down to business.”

  A second girl came out of the privy as Fancy and the other two ladies climbed down from the buckboard. The two girls looked at Fancy, and she tried to study the expression on their faces.

  Keefer, Reece, and Whitman were smiling broadly when Sanders and the three women went into the house.

  “Well, now, ladies, we’re goin’ to have us a real fine time here,” Keefer said.

  “Oh my. There are four of you. It looks as if one of us will be doing double duty,” Joy said.

  “We’re payin’ you to spend the whole night with us,” Keefer said. “I expect all of you will be doin’ double duty.”

  “We done drawed high cards,” Whitman said. “Reece is goin’ to have to wait his turn. I got high card so I get my pick,” he added with a broad, salacious smile.

  “Hey Keefer, you left town too soon,” Sanders said. “You missed the killin’ .”

  Keefer smiled. “Jensen got kilt, did he?”

  “No. Four of the deputies tried to kill him, but he wound up killin’ all four of them, shootin’ ’em down in the street. It was the damndest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “You talk like you’re excited about it,” Keefer scolded.

  “Well, I don’t like the way it turned out, that’s for sure ’n certain,” Sanders said. Inexplicably, a broad smile spread across his face. “But if that warn’t the damndest thing I’ve ever seen, I don’t know what else would be.”

  “Are you tellin’ me that Jensen took on four of the deputies and kilt them all by hisself?” Keefer asked.

  “He’s right, honey,” Candy said. “Why, the whole town is talking about it.”

  “Seein’ as how Bates, Cooper, Barnes, and Gibson is all Bodine’s deputies, how come he ain’t put Jensen in jail?”

  “On account of in the first place, it was self-defense ’n there was lots of people that seen it,” Sanders said. “And in the second place, if you want to know the truth, I’m not just real sure that Bodine could handle Jensen.”

  “What are you talkin’ about? Bodine is the best there is,” Keefer insisted.

  “Maybe not,” Sanders said.

  “I’ll be damned,” Keefer said. “We’d better keep an eye on Jensen. He’s goin’ to be trouble, you mark my words.”

  “Why are you so concerned about Smoke Jensen?” Fancy asked. “What do you mean there’s going to be trouble? Is there bad blood between you?”

  “No, I ain’t never even met the man,” Keefer replied.

  “Does it have anything to do with the children who are staying out here?”

  “What children?” Keefer asked, surprised by the question.

  “I saw two little girls going from the privy to that little cabin. Mr. Sanders said there are six children staying in the cabin.”

  Keefer shot an angry glance toward Sanders before he looked back at Fancy, replacing the momentary flash of anger with a quick forced smile.

  “Yeah, their parents are payin’ us to keep ’em out here for a while. They thought it would be good for them to spend some time on the creek with friends. It’s sort of a vacation for them.”

  “Oh, how wonderful! Maybe we can visit with them a while, later on,” Joy suggested.

  Keefer shook his head. “I don’t think so. You’re all whores. Do you really think these kids’ mamas and papas are goin’ to want their kids spending any time with a whore?”

  Joy’s smile faded, replaced by a momentary look of shame. She smiled again, and if it was a practiced smile, it at least had the effect of lightening the mood and changing the subject. “I believe you said something about a party?”

  * * *

  “Did you see the three ladies?” Wee asked when Lorena and Marilyn returned to the cabin.

  “We saw them,” Lorena said, “but I don’t think you could exactly call them ladies.”

  “What do you call them?” Wee asked, confused by Lorena’s response.

  Lorena smiled. “Never mind. You can call them ladies.”

  “Did they go into the house?” Thad asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “Why good?”

  “That means they won’t be paying too much attention to us for a while. We should be able get a lot of work done today.”

  Mule Gap

  “I’ll buy your horse from you,” Boyd Evans, the manager of the livery stable, said to Smoke as they were standing over Seven’s body.

  “You want to buy Seven? Whatever for? Why would you pay for a dead horse?”

  “Horses have a lot of collagen, and the glue factories pay well for that.”

  “No!” Smoke said. “Seven is not going to be used to make glue! This is my third horse named Seven. Number one is dead, but number two has been turned out to pasture.”

  “You’ve had three horses named Seven?” Evans asked.

  “I’m about to have another horse named Seven, and why not? If England can have eight kings named Henry I can have as many horses named Seven as I want.”

  “Wait. Are you telling me that England has eight kings, and all of them are named Henry?”

  “No,” Smoke replied in an exasperated tone of voice. “What I am telling you is that I want Seven to have a respectable burial.”

  “Where do you want him buried?”

  “Where in Mule Gap are horses buried?”

  “There’s a place out behind the livery where some of ’em are buried. And some folks bury ’em on their own land.”

  “I can’t
take him back to Sugarloaf, so we’ll have to bury him here.”

  Evans brought out a team of mules, connected a harness to Seven, and pulled his body to a place behind the livery stable. There, he hired four men to dig a hole big enough and deep enough to inter Seven.

  Smoke watched until the grave was closed, then he went back into the livery to pay the bill. “And I want to rent a horse for the time I’m here.”

  “You want to rent one or buy one?” the stable owner said. “I have some fine horses for sale.”

  “No, my next horse is already back at my ranch. He’s a two-year-old, the son of Seven, and he looks just like him.”

  “All right. You can pick out the one you want to rent.”

  Smoke chose a bay with four stockings and a blaze. He ran his hand over the horse, feeling for any abnormalities in its configuration, but found none. “All right. I’ll take this one.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until I bring him back.”

  “In that case, I’ll take a hundred dollars to hold until you bring him back.”

  Smoke agreed.

  He returned to the doctor’s office a short while later and found Pearlie sitting up in a chair, fully dressed. “What are you doing up? I thought you would be in bed.”

  “I’m up, ’cause I wasn’t really hurt.”

  “What do you mean you weren’t hurt? You were shot. I saw the bullet wound.”

  “Well, yeah, I was shot, but like I said, I wasn’t really hurt. The doctor himself said I wasn’t hurt.”

  “I said no such thing,” the doctor said, coming into the waiting room of his office. “I said that none of your vital organs were involved and that, if you are careful, this wound won’t give you any trouble.”

  “You also said I could leave,” Pearlie said.

  “I did say that, but you may also recall that I said you couldn’t leave until I saw Mr. Jensen and would be assured that he would take care of you.”

  “Well, he’s here, ’n he’s goin’ to take me out of here. Aren’t you, Smoke?”

  Smoke laughed. “Yes, if you’re up to leaving here, I’ll take you with me.”

  “Let’s go have supper,” Pearlie suggested.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Mrs. Condon, imagine seeing you here,” Smoke said when he and Pearlie stepped into the restaurant at the Del Rey Hotel.

  “Why, Mr. Jensen,” Sara Sue said, “won’t the two of you join me?”

  “You aren’t expecting anyone else?”

  “No, I’m here all alone,” Sara Sue replied.

  The exchange was loud enough for others in the dining room to hear, and it was specifically designed to make anyone who was paying particular attention to them think that the meeting was accidental. Not until Smoke and Pearlie joined her at the table, with Pearlie walking with a pronounced limp, did they speak quietly enough to be able to hold a private conversation.

  “Have you heard anything yet?” Smoke asked.

  “No, and I’m so worried.”

  “I wouldn’t be worried yet. It’s obvious that the man who visited you has no authority to make the decision himself. That has to come from someone else, and it is sure to be one or maybe two days before anyone contacts you.”

  “Oh, I just hate to think of Thad being held for two more days by those awful men,” Sara Sue said.

  “I know Thad,” Smoke said. “He is a very tough and resourceful young man. I have a feeling that he is more than holding his own against them.”

  “Oh!” Sara Sue said. “You were in a shooting today. And Pearlie, I heard that you were shot. I’m glad to see you up and about, and forgive me for not inquiring sooner about you.”

  “I’m doing just fine, Mrs. Condon. I’ve got a little bit of a limp is all. You might call it a hitch in my get-about,” he added with a chuckle.

  “I’m worried about the shooting,” Sara Sue said. “Do you think it’s because they know you are helping me?”

  “It could be,” Smoke admitted. “But it could just as likely be someone trying to settle an old score with me.”

  “Heavens, you mean there is someone out there who might actually want to shoot you?”

  “More than one, I’m afraid,” Smoke said.

  “I knew you were . . . uh . . . rather well-known for your skill with a gun, and I knew that you had helped many people, but I didn’t know there would actually be men who would want to shoot you.”

  “This isn’t the first time, and they haven’t gotten the job done yet.”

  “The worst thing,” Pearlie said, “worse than me getting shot, is that they killed his horse.”

  “Seven?” Sara Sue said. “Oh, Smoke, no! I didn’t hear about that. I’m so sorry. I know what store you set by that horse.”

  “It was tough to lose him, all right,” Smoke said. “But I’m thankful I didn’t lose Pearlie.”

  “Yes, as am I.”

  “What do you hear from Sam?”

  “I got a telegram from him today. He says he’s doing fine, he misses me, and he knows I will get—” Sara Sue paused in midsentence then, with a choke in her voice, she continued. “He said he knows I will get Thad back safely.”

  “We will get him back safely,” Smoke said.

  Sara Sue smiled through her tears. “I am so thankful to you for helping us.”

  * * *

  “Smoke, you told a big one at the dinner table tonight, didn’t you?” Pearlie said as the two men left the hotel.

  “What was that?”

  “You told Mrs. Condon that the shooting today coulda been someone tryin’ to settle an old score. You know as well as I do that someone has figured out we’re helpin’ Mrs. Condon, and they was just tryin’ to get us out of the way.”

  “You’re right,” Smoke said. “But she’s worried enough as it is. If she thinks the kidnappers know we’re helping her, she will be afraid they will follow through on their threat to harm Thad. I see no reason to give her anything more to worry about.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Pearlie said. “She seemed real upset about Seven.”

  “Yes, she always had a few lumps of sugar for Seven anytime she saw him.”

  “I’m real sorry about Seven, Smoke. He was as good a horse as I’ve ever known.”

  “He was a good one, all right. I’m going to hate to have to tell Sally about it. She loved him as much as I did.”

  “She’s going to take it hard, that’s for sure,” Pearlie said.

  “We’ve obviously lost the trail on Keefer,” Smoke. “I think our best bet now is just to wait until they contact Mrs. Condon again. They’ll do that because, so far, she hasn’t paid them one red cent.”

  “Say, as long as we’re going to wait until they contact Miz Condon again, you don’t mind if we wait in the saloon, do you?” Pearlie asked as they walked by Kennedy’s Saloon.

  Smoke chuckled. “As a matter of fact, a saloon is a perfect place to wait. You can sometimes pick up some good information in a saloon.”

  Kennedy wasn’t in the saloon, but the bartender recognized Smoke and greeted him with a smile. Then he turned his attention to Pearlie.

  “And how are you doin’, young fella? The last time I seen you, you was lyin’ in the dirt, bleedin’ like a stuck pig.”

  “You saw that, did you?”

  “Oh, I think most of the town saw it.”

  “Well, thanks to Smoke stoppin’ the bleeding, and the doc cleaning out the wound, I’m getting along pretty well,” Pearlie replied.

  “Well, I must say, Smoke Jensen has certainly made our town famous. How many towns can say that Smoke Jensen faced down four men in the street?”

  “Smoke Jensen?” another man said. He had been standing at the far end of the bar, nursing his drink. “Are you the . . . great . . . Smoke Jensen?” He set the word great apart in his question, twisting it in a way that indicated it was meant as a mockery and not as an accolade.

  “Glen, give the gentleman at the other end of th
e bar a drink on me,” Smoke said easily. He had recognized the taunting in the man’s voice and was trying to defuse the situation.

  “I’ll buy my own drink,” the man said.

  “Good, I like a man who pays his own way,” Smoke said, purposely turning a deaf ear to the man’s taunts.

  “I seen the fight you was in today,” the man said. “Them four was fools. They wan’t a damn one of ’em what coulda hit a bull in the ass if they was ten foot from it. Oh, wait, they did kill your horse, though, didn’t they?” He laughed. “Did you cry when your horse got shot?”

  “I got a lump in my throat, yes,” Smoke said.

  “Well now, ain’t that just too bad?” The heckler laughed again.

  “Mr. Allison, you got no call to act like that about a man losin’ his horse,” Glen, the bartender, said. “You know how most men feel about their horses.”

  “Allison?” Smoke said. “Would you be the one they call Blackjack Allison?”

  “Heard of me, have you?”

  “Yeah.” The only reason Smoke had heard of Blackjack Allison was because Sheriff Carson, down in Big Rock, had mentioned him no more than a week earlier. Smoke recalled what the sheriff had said.

  “I just got another notice on someone named Blackjack Allison. He’s been in seven or eight gunfights recently. But as they were all face-to-face gunfights, he hasn’t been charged for any of them. From what I’ve heard, though, he’s someone who is trying to build a reputation. On at least a few of the fights, it is said that he pushed the other man into drawing on him.”

  “Are you trying to push me into a gunfight, Allison?”

  “I don’t know,” Allison said. “Are me ’n you, the great Smoke Jensen, about to have a gunfight?”

  Most in the saloon, sensing there was about to be a gunfight, began moving out of the way. Only Pearlie, standing just behind Smoke and certainly in the line of fire if shooting began, didn’t move. He continued to drink his beer with as much nonchalance as if he had been sitting alone at a table.

  “There’s no need for us to fight,” Smoke said.

  “Oh, yes, there is. You see, you’re worth five thousand dollars to me. Dead.”

  “Five thousand dollars? Mr. Allison, are you out of your mind? I don’t have any paper out on me anywhere. What in the world makes you think I’m worth five thousand dollars?”