Absaroka Ambush (first Mt Man)/Courage Of The Mt Man

by William W. Johnstone

  She patted his arm. “I’m sure it was quite a sermon. Do we stay here for the night?”

  “I think it would be best if we moved on for a few more miles. No point in wasting good weather.”

  Sally put hazel eyes on her husband. “Someday you must tell me about your impromptu Bible reading.”

  “Oh, I will. When we get a few more miles up the road.”

  They experienced no more trouble as the herd moved slowly north. The drovers pushed them into Montana, and after three days drive they turned the herd west. Now the real test began, for they were on no known trail. That meant that Smoke stayed busy all day, seeking a right of way for the herd and being careful not to damage the property of other ranchers and farmers. And the drovers had to work twice as hard in order to keep the herd together and not pick up anyone else’s cows.

  Hands from other ranches willingly pitched in to help. They did it for many reasons, including the chance to pick up news and to taste some of Sally’s cooking, for the word had spread before them.

  Many of them also wanted the chance to size up Smoke Jensen. The majority of the hands and ranchers who met him quickly found themselves liking the man, for they found in him a man who worked just as hard as his hands and who told it the way he saw it, pulling no punches. That was the Western way.

  And the story of the shoot-out back in that little Wyoming town, and the fistfight that followed, had already spread, to be told and retold around the campfires of the West.

  The boys in the drive got their wish, and they met some Indians. They were not hostile and appeared to be starving. But there was no way they were going to beg. They had been defeated on the battlefields, and now were not much of a threat to anyone. But beg they would not. Smoke could see that. He could also see hungry children and he couldn’t stand that. Smoke gave them ten of his own cattle and wished them well.

  “What kind of Injuns were those, Mr. Smoke?” Young Guy asked.

  “Cheyenne. Proud people.”

  “They didn’t look like very much to me.”

  “Some of the fiercest warriors that ever lived,” Smoke told the boy. “Back when I was not much older than you, I lived with them part of one winter. Me and old Preacher. Indians are good people…in their own way. Their ways are just not like ours, that’s all.”

  Smoke cut north for several days, to avoid the Indian reservations, then again pointed the herd west. They had one hell of a time crossing the Yellowstone, almost losing a hand when his horse panicked and floundered. They saved the hand, but the horse was swept downstream and the cowboy lost his horse, saddle, saddlebags, and Winchester.

  Then they hit days of hot, dry weather before they reached the Sweet Grass River. The cattle almost stampeded when they smelled the water. One old mossyhorn bull who had joined the herd a few days back charged a horse and gored it so badly, the horse had to be shot. When the horse fell, Harris was pinned under the saddle. The bull took out his anger on Harris before Smoke could kill it. Harris was buried beside the trail. He wasn’t the first to have been killed on a cattle drive, and certainly would not be the last.

  Smoke made a short talk after the body was lowered and covered, saying a few good things about Harris, and Denver read words from the Bible. Some of the boys had a hard time keeping back the tears.

  When Sally sang “What A Friend We Have In Jesus,” several of the boys and more than one of the men could no longer contain themselves and even old Denver had to horn his nose a couple of times. The whole affair just about did Smoke in, too, and he was glad to be back in the saddle and moving. It wasn’t the first lonely grave he’d helped dig.

  Smoke led them south of the Crazy Mountains and then led them north and west across the Sixteenmile River, keeping the Big Belt Mountains to the north. Smoke told his people they could visit Helena after the herd was delivered and have a rip-roarin’ good time. Right now, the herd needed to be delivered.

  Mountains towered all around them as Smoke wound the herd through valleys lush with summer vegetation. These were not yet the towering peaks that lay farther north, but they were respectable mountains just the same.

  Smoke halted the herd in a long, wide, beautiful valley and told his people to let them graze. “This is where Duggan said he’d meet us,” he told his crew. “So make camp and relax. We’re a couple of days early.” He smiled. “Give or take a week or so.”

  “This is puzzling,” Sally told her husband, snuggled next to him that night. “Why didn’t this Duggan want the herd taken straight to his range?”

  “I don’t know. Unless he doesn’t want Clint Black to know about it, just yet.”

  “That must be it.”

  The next morning, Nate came fogging his horse into camp. “Two women comin’, boss. Ridin’ sidesaddle an’ all. They some duded up, too. Funniest lookin’ hats I ever did see.”

  “Two women?” Smoke asked. “Here?”

  “There they come, boss. See for yourself.”

  The women were twins, and identical twins at that. They were elegantly dressed, in the very latest Eastern riding habits. Their hats were huge things, with what looked to Smoke like mosquito netting tied under their chins. They walked their horses over to a natural rise and stepped daintily from the saddle, handing the reins to a dumbstruck young Rabbit, who was bug-eyed staring at the pair.

  “Which one of you is Mr. Jensen?” one twin asked.

  “Right here, ma’am.” Smoke walked toward them and took off his hat. “And you two would be…?”

  “I am Toni and this is my sister, Jeanne. Duggan.”

  Smoke got it then. T. J. Duggan. “You have got to be kidding!”

  “Quite the contrary, Mr. Jensen. We own the Double D ranch.”

  Everybody gathered around, staring.

  “Ah…this is my wife, Sally,” Smoke finally managed to say.

  “Pleased, I’m sure,” the other twin said, and then dismissed Sally silently.

  “Of the New Hampshire Reynolds,” Smoke said, before Sally could step forward and bust one of these ladies right in the chops.

  “Oh, my!” the other twin said. “I didn’t realize. Of course! We’ve read about you, Sally. How wonderful to find some degree of breeding out here in this…” She looked around. “…bastion of coarseness and vulgarity.”

  “What the hell did she say?” Denver whispered to Shorty.

  “Don’t git me to lyin’,” Shorty told him. “But I don’t think it was no compliment.”

  “That’s what I think, too.”

  “Where are your hands, Miss Duggan?” Smoke asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your hands? No. I don’t mean them. Not your hands. Your crew? Your cowboys?”

  “Oh, we don’t have any yet.”

  “You…don’t have any? Well, how in the he…heck are you going to handle these cattle without a crew?”

  “Oh, we’ll leave that up to you,” Toni said brightly. “I mean, that’s what you do, isn’t it?”

  “On my own ranch, yes. I don’t hire out to other people.”

  “Well, I’m certain we can work something out,” Jeanne said. “Come now, time’s wasting. Let’s don’t dawdle. We have quite a distance to go.”

  “Wait a minute!” Smoke said, exasperation in his voice. “Where is your ranch?”

  “Twelve miles, that way,” Toni said, pointing. “We camped in the timber last night. We’ll pick up our equipment on the way back. We’re quite expert in the woods, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know,” Smoke said. “Camped in the woods,” he muttered. “Experts, no less. All right,” he said. “Get the cattle ready for the trail.”

  Sally was laughing at his expression. “Don’t dawdle now, honey.”

  Smoke was muttering low curses as he mounted up.

  “Did we do something wrong?” Jeanne asked Sally. “We’ve been out here from Boston for several months and we seem to, well, anger all the people we’ve come in contact with.”

  Sa
lly climbed up on the wagon seat and took the reins. “I wonder why?” she said drily.

  5

  The ladies’ camp was equipped like an African safari. Smoke and the other hands had never seen so much junk in their lives.

  “What’s that thing?” Rabbit asked, pointing to a canvas tent at the edge of the camp area. “It ain’t even got no top to it.”

  “Don’t ask me,” Smoke said.

  “One side is for bathing and the other side is a toilet,” Sally informed them.

  “Do tell?” Rabbit muttered.

  “We’re not going to make the ranch by nightfall,” Smoke told the twins. “We’ll be lucky to make two miles in this country. Best thing we can do is camp here for the night and leave early in the morning. You really have no one at the ranch?”

  “Well, we have a cook and a nice young Spanish boy who takes care of the horses and does the lawn work,” Jeanne replied. “We just can’t get anyone else to work for us. We’re obviously doing something wrong but no one will tell us what it is.”

  “You’re just new out here,” Smoke told them, putting on his diplomat’s hat and lying through his teeth. “Takes Western folks a while to size a person up.” He wanted to tell the twins that if they’d stop looking down their blue-blood noses at everybody, things might ease up a mite.

  “Oh!” Toni said. “Well. I have an idea. We’ll give a party and that will break the ice. What is it called out here? A whigdig?”

  “A shindig, ma’am,” Smoke corrected.

  “Yes! That’s it. I don’t suppose there are any violinists close by?”

  “I rather doubt it,” Smoke said.

  “Oh, well. My sister and I will entertain. We’re very accomplished musicians.”

  “Wonderful,” Smoke said.

  “Yes. Jeanne is a flutist and I was trained as a classical pianist.”

  “Ought to be a real entertaining evening,” Smoke said.

  “Oh, quite! Are you familiar with Chopin?”

  Smoke shook his head. He was getting a bad case of indigestion.

  “Do you know the closest place where we might order caviar, Mr. Jensen?”

  “No, ma’am,” Smoke said wearily. “I sure don’t.”

  “You see,” Toni said during supper. “After our parents were killed, my sister and I came into quite a sizable inheritance. We have funds in other businesses, of course, but we felt it would be exciting to own a ranch.”

  “Right,” Smoke said. “Have you met your neighbor yet, a Clint Black?”

  “He came to call. He found something hysterically amusing. He laughed the entire time he visited. I found him quite boorish, to be truthful.”

  “What’s boorish?” Ben whispered to Duke.

  “Hell, I don’t know. But I bet it ain’t real nice.”

  “Yes,” Jeanne said. “Mr. Black is a rather nice-looking man, in a rugged sort of way. But he’s terribly coarse. His table manners were an abomination. We fixed cucumber sandwiches for him and he said he wouldn’t feed those to his horse.”

  “You have to understand,” Sally said, “that Western fare is simple, but filling and wholesome. Most out here grew up on beef and beans.”

  From the expression on her face, that cuisine didn’t meet her approval. At all.

  “Just where is the town of Blackstown?” Smoke asked.

  “About twenty-five miles west of our location,” Toni said. “A rather quaint little town.”

  The way she said it gave Smoke the idea that Blackstown appealed to her about as much as sticking her big toe into a fresh pile of cow droppings.

  “Did Clint Black say anything, well, threatening to either of you?” Smoke asked the twins.

  They exchanged glances. Toni replied. “Not…directly, Mr. Jensen. But we both feel there were some thinly veiled threats.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “Well, he is an unmarried man and women are scarce out here. He made some rather crude advances at Jeanne, and then when she rebuffed him, he directed his attentions toward me. I told him that I was not interested. He said I’d come begging before all this was over. I asked what in the world he meant by that. He just laughed and walked away.”

  Jeanne said, “Then I noticed that we were being watched and followed constantly. When we tried to hire people to work on our ranch, they would just shake their heads, mumble something and walk off. It’s obvious that Mister Black had ordered us boycotted, for some reason. We are able to shop in the town, for many of the merchants there don’t care for the man or his high-handed tactics. Mister Black’s brother, Harris, a thug if I ever saw one, is the Sheriff, and his deputies are just as bad as he is, if not worse. All in all, it is not a pleasant situation.”

  “Who sold you this ranch?”

  “It wasn’t sold directly to us,” Jeanne said. “Our attorneys are always looking for places to make our monies work, and when this property came on the market, they bought the ranch. However, they had no idea that we would personally come out here to run it.” She looked directly at Smoke. “You think that we are ill-suited to do so and that we were wrong to come out here, don’t you, Mr. Jensen?”

  “Smoke. My name is Smoke. And in answer to your question, yes, I do think you’re out of place here. Clint Black is a dangerous, ruthless, and power-hungry man. From what I was able to learn about him, he’s about as easy to get along with as a rattlesnake.”

  The twins smiled, Toni saying, “Our attorneys said much the same about you, Mr. Jensen.”

  Smoke chuckled. “Have your attorneys ever been west of the Mississippi?”

  “Heavens no!” Jeanne said. “But everyone they communicated with said you were a bad man.”

  Sally laughed. “Out here, Jeanne, the phrase ‘a bad man’ doesn’t hold the same connotation as back East. It doesn’t mean that person is evil, or not to be trusted, or anything like that. It means that person is a bad man to crowd or try to harm. It might mean he’s a dangerous man in a fight. My husband is known as a bad man because he has the name of ‘gunfighter.’”

  “We saw the play,” Toni said.

  “That’s too bad,” Smoke told her. “I’m told it’s terrible.”

  “And we’ve read the books,” Jeanne said.

  “They’re even worse,” Smoke replied.

  “I must admit,” Toni said, “that you are a rather, ah, imposing figure of a man. Have you really gunned down five thousand men?”

  Smoke laughed aloud. “If I had done that, when would I have had the time to get married, build a home, father children, and run a ranch? I’m afraid the stories about me are highly exaggerated.” He stood up and tossed out the dregs of his coffee cup. “I’m going to make a turn around the herd. It’s getting late. We’d all best get ready to hit the sack.”

  “He’s only gunned down about a thousand men,” Sally said, with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

  Smoke sighed.

  “Oh, my!” the twins gasped.

  A shot brought Smoke lunging to his feet, grabbing for his guns. He could hear the bawling of cattle and the thunderous roar of a stampede building. He jammed his feet into his boots and slung his gun belt around his waist just as the camp filled with horses. He could just make out hooded men, all wearing long dusters, and all with guns in their hands. A horse hit him and knocked him sprawling.

  “Sally!” he called. “Run for the timber. Run, honey.”

  He struggled to get to his feet. A bullet tore into his shoulder and staggered him. He could hear the cries of wounded men as his crew was being shot to pieces. He was again knocked spinning by a running horse. He grabbed ahold of a rider’s leg and jerked him out of the saddle, smashing him in the face with a big fist. A bullet nicked his head and he fell to the ground calling out Sally’s name. Through the painful fog in his brain, he could hear the screaming of men and women and boys and the roar of a full-blown stampede. Clint Black! he thought. I should have placed more men on guard. I should have guessed he’d have the twins followed. />
  Then there was no more time left for thinking. Smoke had to stay alive. He had to find Sally. He had to fight.

  He jumped up behind a rider and hammered blows at the man, knocking him out of the saddle. In the saddle, Smoke fumbled for the reins and found them. The night was so black, he could not see five feet in any direction. Something struck him on the head and the last thing he remembered was grabbing hold of the saddle horn as the badly frightened animal took off in a panicked run.

  Warmth awakened him. He lay on the ground for several moments, not moving or opening his eyes. He listened. He could hear squirrels chattering and birds singing. A bee hummed past him. Without lifting his head, he opened his eyes. He was in the high country, he could tell that. But he didn’t have the vaguest idea where in the high country. To make matters worse, he didn’t know who he was.

  He rolled over and pain tore through his left shoulder. Groaning, he sat up. His left shirtsleeve was bloody. Part of a large splinter was sticking out of his flesh. He remembered being shot, or thinking he’d been shot. He must have been hit with the stock of a rifle. The stock might have been broken and it ripped apart when whoever it was had hit him, driving the splinter into his shoulder. Gritting his teeth, he pulled the long piece of wood out of his shoulder. He looked at it and threw it away. He gingerly felt his head. It hurt. There were two lumps on his noggin and dried blood.

  “Sally!” he said aloud, his voice a croak. He cleared his throat as the events of the night before came crashing back to him.

  He looked up at the sun. About ten o’clock. He felt sudden panic try to overtake his emotions. He pushed panic aside and regained control. He pushed himself to his boots and almost fell, reaching out to grab a small tree for support. He leaned against the tree for a moment. Damn, but he was weak.

  The camp had been attacked—he tried to sort out the jumble in his aching head. He remembered yelling for Sally to get away. He recalled the shooting and the hooded riders. He suddenly and vividly remembered the screaming of the women, the yelling and moaning of his hands, and the stampeding herd.