Blood of the Mountain Man (4 page)

Carl was staggering around behind the bar, trying to figure out what had happened. Smoke cleared it all up real quick by grabbing the man by the bandanna and brutally hauling him over the bar. Carl’s eyes were bugged out and he was making choking sounds. Smoke began spinning him around and around in a circle, Carl impacting with tables and chairs and knocking them in all directions. Smoke released his hold on the bandanna and Carl went sailing across the room, right through the second large window and out into the street. Carl was thrown up against, a horse and the animal reared in fright and kicked out with its hind legs. The steel-shod hooves caught Carl right in the butt and the would-be tough went sailing across the street. He landed on his face in the dirt, out cold.

The citizens in the saloon were enjoying every minute of it, wide-eyed and smiling.

“Oh, hell!” Shell said, getting to his feet and facing a mean-eyed Smoke Jensen.

Smoke smiled at him and then reared back. Shell bounced off a wall and very unwillingly came toward Smoke. Smoke stepped to one side, grabbed the man in the very same manner he’d done with Ned, and threw him out into the street. Shell landed in a horse trough and wisely decided to stay there.

A very startled Red Lee and his foreman had just ridden up and stared in amazement at the sight before them.

“Who is that out there?” Smoke asked the locals who were still sitting at a table.

“Red Lee and Jim Sloane,” he was told. “Big rancher and his foreman.”

“Is that right?” Smoke said. He found his whiskey, downed what remained of it, and walked out to the boardwalk, using the batwings, about all that was still intact at the front of the saloon.

Smoke stood on the boardwalk and looked at the two men for a few seconds. The big, rough-looking man with red hair returned the stare.

“I suppose you’re Red Lee,” Smoke said.

“That’s right. What the hell is going on around here?”

“Some of your boys decided to get lippy. One of their suggestions was to rope and drag me. I didn’t like the idea.”

“Damn shore didn’t,” Shell muttered from the water trough. “It was a really bad idea.”

“Shut up,” Red told him. He returned his gaze to Smoke.

Smoke said, “You obviously enjoy the notion of your hands riding roughshod over people. So that makes you responsible for whatever happens. The saloon needs to be swept out and straightened up. You do it.”

The whole town had turned out. At least thirty-five people now stood on the boardwalk, silent and listening and watching.

Red’s expression was priceless. It took him a moment to find his voice. ‘You want me to do what?”

“Swamp out the saloon.”

“When Hell freezes over,” Red said.

“Oh, it’ll be before then.” Smoke’s hand flashed and his .44 came out spitting fire and lead. The bullets howled and screamed around the hooves of Red’s horse. The animal panicked and reared up, dumping Red on his butt in the street. The foreman was frantically fighting to get his own horse under control.

Smoke could move with deceptive speed for a man of his size. He was off the boardwalk and in the street in the blink of an eye. He jerked the foreman out of the saddle and threw him down in the dirt on his belly, momentarily addling the man. He turned and planted a big fist smack on the side of Red’s jaw. The rancher went down like a brick.

Smoke jerked their guns from leather and tucked them behind his own belt. Jim got to his boots just in time to feel a hard hand gripping his neck and another hand gathering up denim at the seat of his pants. The foreman felt himself propelled out of the street, up on the boardwalk and then through the broken window. He slid on his face for a few feet before his face came to rest against a full cuspidor.

Jim looked up to see his boss come sailing through the other broken window. Red Lee landed hard on his belly and slid a couple of yards, coming to an abrupt halt when his head banged against the front of the bar.

The bartender had long since exited out the back door and hastily beat it over to the barbershop. He and barber were standing by the front window, watching.

“Who is that man?” the bartender asked.

“Damned if I know,” the barber replied. “But he’s sure a one-man wreckin’ crew.”

Over at the saloon, the bulk of Smoke Jensen filled the pushed-open batwings. His hands were filled with guns taken from the still addled hands of Red Lee. “Find some brooms and dustpans,” he told the men on the floor. “And get busy.”

“You’re a dead man,” Red Lee said, his voice harsh and filled with hatred.

Smoke tossed him a pistol. The six-shooter landed on the floor, inches from the rancher.

“You want to try your luck, be my guest,” Smoke told him.

Outside, Ned had climbed out of the water trough and was slopping around. The liveryman ran over and whispered in his ear, and Ned damn near fainted. He squished up to the boardwalk and over to a busted window.

“Boss? Dyer just read the brand on that stranger horse. “That’s Smoke Jensen, Boss.”

The saloon had never been so clean. Ned, Shell and Carl pitched in and the five of them worked i it until it shone. Smoke sat at a corner table an ate supper while the men worked.

“I’ll be back through here from time to time Smoke said, having no intention of ever returning to this town. “Chances are you won’t know I’r around, but I will be. If I hear of you or your me ever crowding another citizen or drifter, I’ll hunt you down and kill you, Red.”

“This wasn’t none of your affair, Jensen,” Red said sullenly, pushing a broom across the floor.

“Not until your men started crowding me. That made it personal.”

“They was just havin’ fun.”

“I didn’t see the humor in it.”

Other area ranchers and farmers had drifted i and were enjoying the scene. The saloon was nearly full. Red and his men had been throwing the weight around for years, and payback time was Iong overdue and much appreciated.

Smoke was under no illusions about what Re was going to do. Just as soon as Red got a chance he was going to try to kill him. Ned and Shell an Carl were cowboys, not fast guns. They rode for rough brand, but they were not killers.

But Jim Sloane was another matter. Smoke felt he would side with his boss when it came down to the nut-cuttin’.

Red finally threw down his broom and turned 1 face Smoke. “That’s it, Jensen. No more.”

‘Your choice,” Smoke told him, a fresh pot of coffee on the table before him.

“You’d kill me over a bunch of people you never laid eyes on before today?”

“I don’t want to.”

“That don’t answer my question.”

“You figure it out.”

“I come in here first, Jensen. I fought . . .”

“I don’t want to hear that crap!” Smoke said harshly. “I’m sick of hearing it from men like you. Yes, you fought Indians and outlaws. Yes, you settled this land. But it’s 1883 now. And time has passed you by. The old ways are all but gone. It won’t be long before this territory will become a state. With a state militia and maybe even a state police force. You think they’ll put up with the crap you’ve been pulling? The answer is no, they won’t. Look around you, Red.”

Red did, and saw a half a dozen ranchers and their foremen, all armed, all staring back at him. Suddenly, all because of one man, Red knew his days of beings top dog were over. The people had become united against him. And he hated Smoke Jensen for that.

“You still lookin’ for hands out at your spread, Mister Jackson?” Shell asked a rancher.

“Still lookin’, Shell. You interested?”

“I sure am.”

“Me, too,” Ned said.

“And me,” Carl was quick to add.

“You’re all hired.”

“You yellow bastards!” Red told his former riders. ‘You’d best watch your mouth, Mister Lee,” Shell told the man. ‘You can insult me all you like, but leave my family out of it.” He looked at his friends. “Let’s get our gear from the ranch. See you ’bout dark, Mister Jackson.”

“The grub will be hot and waitin’ on you, boys.” The three punchers left the saloon . . . after nodding respectfully at Smoke.

Red Lee cursed the men until they were out of sight. Smoke waited, well aware that the man was hovering near the breaking point.

“Go home, Red,” another rancher told the man. “Go home and cool off.”

“Don’t you tell me what to do, you goddamn raw-hider.”

“We all were rawhiders when we first came here, Red,” another rancher said. “Even you. So you got no call to insult us.”

“I’ll do just as I’ve always done,” the man popped back. “And that is whatever I damn well please.” “Them days is over, Red,” a farmer spoke up. ‘You’re the only rancher in the area that don’t buy my vegetables and bacon and hams, and whose men still ride roughshod over my place. It’ll not happen again. I tell you that face to face.”

Red pointed a finger at the farmer, dressed in overalls and low-heeled boots. The finger was shaking and his voice was thick with barely controlled emotion. “You don’t talk to me like that, Jergenson. I don’t take lip from a goddamn squatter.”

Smoke sat and listened. With any kind of luck, he would not have to draw on the hair-trigger-tempered rancher. He felt that the locals were just about to deed with Red Lee. And maybe he’d been wrong about the foreman, Jim Sloane. The man was slowly edging away from his boss, occasionally looking pleadingly in Smoke’s direction.

Smoke sat drinking coffee, waiting. He hated two-bit tyrants like Red Lee. He’d had a gutfull of them as a boy, back in Missouri, working their hard-scrabble rocky farm from can-see to can’t-see while his daddy was off in the war and his mother lay dying.

Red suddenly stopped his cursing and shouting and turned on Smoke. “Stand up, gunfighter,” he said.

“Don’t do it, Red,” Smoke told him. “Just settle down and be a good citizen from now on. Can’t you see that the others are willing to forgive and forget?”

“I said get up, damn your eyes!”

“Try me, Red,” the rancher named Jackson said.

Red turned, disbelief in his eyes. “You, Jackson? You want to try me?”

“I reckon it’s come to that, Red,” the rancher said calmly, standing with his feet spread and his right hand close to the butt of his six-gun.

“I’m out of this,” Jim Sloane said. “Red, man . . . come on. Let’s go home.”

“You’re fired, you son-of-a-bitch!” Red shouted.

“You’re hired,” a rancher told Sloane. “You’re a good cowboy, Jim.”

“Draw, damn you!” Red shouted to Jackson.

“I’ll not start this,” the rancher said.

Red’s temper exploded and he grabbed iron. He got off the first shot, the lead splintering wood at Jackson’s feet. Jackson didn’t miss. His shot took Red in the center of his chest and the man staggered back, an amazed look on his face.

“Why . . . you shot me,” he said.

Smoke poured another cup of coffee.

Red tried to speak again but his mouth was suddenly filled with blood. He slowly sank to his knees on the fresh-mopped floor and his gun slipped from his fingers to clatter on the boards. Red knelt there, looking at the pistol.

“It didn’t have to be,” Jackson said.

“Yes, it did,” another rancher disagreed.

The words were very faint to Red Lee as the world began darkening around him. This just couldn’t be happening to him. Not to him.

“I tried to tell him,” Jim said. “Over the past months I’ve tried and tried to talk sense to him. He just wouldn’t listen.”

“I know you have,” Jackson said.

“The day of the tyrant is over,” Jergenson said. “I knew it had to happen.”

“You be sure and save me a couple of them hams come this fall,” a rancher told the farmer. “They was mighty fine eatin’.”

“I will,” Jergenson said.

“Hams?” Red Lee gasped.

“Has he got any kin?” the barber asked.

“Not that I know of,” Jim Sloane replied. “His wife took the kids and run off years ago. Right after he beat her real bad.”

“She had it . . . comin’,” Red said.

Jackson punched out the empty and loaded up. “I don’t have much use for a man who’d beat a woman,” he said.

Red Lee fell over on his face.

“Hell, now I got to mop the damn floor,” the bartender said.

Smoke rode out just as the sun was beginning to peep over the ragged crags of the mountains. He had not looked forward to this trip in the first place, and so far his feelings had certainly proved accurate.

He was glad to put the little no-named village behind him as he rode north toward the mining town of Red Light.

By the end of the day, he was deep in the mountains and climbing higher through the twisting and winding passes. He’d been here before, back when he was a boy, roaming the wilderness with the mountain man, Preacher. He remembered a quiet little stream and was looking for it. Smoke loved the high country. It was here amid the splendor of the mountains that he felt most at home, most at peace with himself and his surroundings.

He did not dwell on the death of the rancher, Red Lee. To Smoke’s way of thinking, the deaths of bullies and those who took from society more than they gave were no more meaningful than the hole a man leaves after sticking his finger into a quiet creek. Nothing.

Smoke Jensen did not know how many men he himself had killed. He knew the figure was very high. If he never had to draw a gun on another man, it would suit him just fine. But if he had to kill again, a bully, a rapist, a murderer, a man who rode roughshod over the rights of decent people, it would not cause him to lose a second’s sleep.

Courts were fine and dandy A needful thing, he supposed, to protect those who could not protect themselves. Smoke needed no such protection. He could take care of himself, his loved ones, his property. And if anyone violated anything he loved or protected or owned, they would have to face him, and courts be damned. His was a simple code, one if followed by all men would make the world a simpler place in which to live: You leave me alone, I will leave you alone. You have a right to a personal opinion, just as I do. But no more than I do. If you violate my space, you will have to fight me. Smoke knew he was an anachronism. He knew that courts and lawyers and judges were responsible for making the world a safer place, but a much more complicated one. And he felt it didn’t have to be.