Cunning of the Mountain Man (20 page)

“Hey, Rip, you’re right,” Sully declared as he turned to look Jeff’s way. “It’s the same lawdog that locked us away in Yuma prison for three years. Like to have kilt me, heavin’ all them big rocks onto the levee. Bit far from your stompin’ grounds, ain’tcha, Ranger?”

“You’re making a mistake, Sullivan,” Jeff grated out.

“Nope. Way I sees it, it’s you’ve made a big mistake. They’s two of us . . . and this time our backs ain’t turned.”

Jeff rose slowly, shook his head in sad recollection. “Never could abide a liar, Sully. You two were facing me that day in Tombstone. Didn’t either one of you clear leather before I had you cold. I did it then, I can do it now.”

“You’ve got older now, slower, Sergeant York.”

“No. It’s Captain now, and I’m not getting older . . . only better.”

Two more second-rate fast guns stepped through the batwings and took in the action. “Sully, Rip, you got some fun lined up?” the chubby one asked.

“That we have, Pete. Just funnin’ with an old acquaintance from Arizona. Ain’t that right, Ranger York?”

“Can we get a piece of him, too, Sully?” the skinny teen next to Pete asked eagerly.

“Sorry, Lenny. When I get through, I don’t reckon there’ll be enough left to go around,” Sully refused the offer, a sneer aimed at Jeff York.

“You’re forgetting the Ranger here has a friend along,” Mort Plummer said from behind the bar. He hoped to delay the inevitable. To at least get the killing started out in the street, not in his bar.

“He run out at the git-go. Plumb yellow,” Sully brayed. “I don’t think so,” the bar owner countered. “I sort of recognize him from a while back. Never asked him personal, understand? But I figger him to be Walt Reardon, the gunfighter from Montana.”

“No wonder he ran. I hear he lost his belly a long while ago.”

“Not so’s you’d notice,” Walt Reardon announced, as he pushed his way between Pete and Lenny. He was followed a second later by Smoke Jensen.

“I’m gonna go get the rest,” Lenny declared, as he moved his boots quickly through the door.

Mort Plummer chose that moment to avoid damage to his property. “Get out. The bar’s closed.”

Sully turned back to him. “I don’t think so. Pour me another shot, and set up the boys, too, when they come.” “Get out of my saloon.”

“You pushin’ for a bullet all your own, barkeep?” Mort Plummer tried to stare Sully down, but it was Smoke Jensen who answered. “You’ve got a nasty mouth. Too bad you don’t have a brain to go with it.”

Two of the town drunks, who blearily recognized Smoke Jensen from the day of the lynch mob, beat a hasty retreat. One literally dived through the space below the spring-hinged batwings. He collided with the legs of five proddy outlaw trash. Lenny led the way as they entered. Mort Plummer had gone white with fear. The hard case quintet spread out and faced off against three coldly professional guns. Eight to three. Pretty good odds, the way Sully figured it.

“You boys have no part of this,” Jeff told the newcomers. “Walk out now, and no harm will come of it.” Sully’s eyes never left Jeff. “You boys have a drink on me, then I’ll open this dance.”

“No. I will,” Smoke Jensen contradicted. Smoke’s .44 leaped into his hand, leveled at Sully’s belt buckle, before the wannabe gunhawk’s hand could even reach his. Smoke forced a sneer to his lips. “You’re too easy.”

The humiliation of having been tossed back, like an undersized fish, pushed Sully to unwise desperation. He foolishly completed his draw.

“Goddamn ya, I’ll kill ya all.”

Smoke Jensen didn’t even bother with him. Jeff York had iron in motion, and completed the life of the petty outlaw with a round to the heart. Sullivan never even fired a shot. Three of the gang of outlaws-turned-bounty hunter had their own six-guns in play. Smoke shot one of them in the upper right chest, and put another down with a .44 slug in the thigh.

When that one went down, three of the remaining shooters pounded boots on the floor in an effort to widen the space between them all. Walt Reardon tracked one, and took him off his boots with a bullet in the side. Jeff accounted for another. But the third had disappeared. Sudden motion behind Smoke Jensen’s back ripped a warning from Mort Plummer, who had ducked below the thick front of his bar and had seen the reflection in the mirror.

“Look out, Smoke!”

“
Smoke Jensen!
" Pete and Rip yelled at the same time. “Oh, my God! I give up,” Lenny wailed. “Don’t shoot me, Mr. Jensen, please. Ranger,” he appealed to Jeff, “I give up.” He raised his arms skyward, the Smith American dangling from one finger by the trigger guard.

“Yeller belly,” Rip growled at Lenny as he swung his six-gun on Smoke Jensen. “Kiss your butt good—”

Smoke Jensen drove the last word back down Rip’s throat with a sizzling .44 slug. Mort Plummer moaned in anguish. Glass exploded outward in a musical shower from one of the paint-decorated front windows, as two of the remaining hard cases dived through it to escape certain death.

Pete found himself alone, facing the guns of Smoke Jensen, Jeff York, and Walt Reardon. Pete’s momma had always considered him a bright little boy. He proved her right when his Colt thudded in the sawdust that covered the plank floor. He raised trembling hands above his head.

“All righty, I call it quits. After all, Sully said we was only funnin’ with y’all.”

Smoke cut his eyes to Jeff. “Do you want him, or shall I?”

“My pleasure,” Jeff York announced as he reholstered his .45 Colt.

He took a pair of thin, pigskin leather gloves from his hip pocket and slid them on his hands, his eyes never off of Pete for a second. Slowly he advanced on the frightened two-bit gunhawk.

“Eight to three. Is that the way you boys usually play it? Now it’s just one-on-one,” Jeff taunted. “You got a choice. You can pick up that gun on the floor and try me . . . or you can use your fists.”

“I ain’t got no quarrel with you, Ranger. Ain’t no fight in me,” Pete pleaded.

“No backbone, either,” Jeff retorted. “Do something, even if it’s wrong. I’m getting tired of waiting.”

Pete’s eyes widened suddenly, then swiftly narrowed. He lunged at Jeff with a knife that seemed to spring from behind his back. Jeff popped Pete solidly in the mouth. Lips mashed and split, blood sprayed from Pete’s face in a rosy halo.

Jeff sidestepped the blade and grabbed the wrist and upper arm of the knife hand. He brought it down, as he quickly raised a knee. The elbow broke with an audible pop. Pete went down, to howl his agony in a fetal position in the spit-and-beer-stained sawdust. Jeff silenced him with a solid kick to the head.

“Sneaky bastard, wasn’t he?” Jeff rhetorically asked the silent room.

“The supplies are loaded,” Smoke Jensen said dryly.

“Then I suppose we’re through in town,” Jeff said in an equal tone.

“You weren’t never here, Mr. Jensen,” Mort Plummer swore from behind his bar. “Wouldn’t do to confuse our good sheriff as to who shot up my place.”

“Take whatever you can find in their jeans to cover your loss,” Smoke suggested.

“Right. And I’ve never seen you in my borned days. Good luck.”

“We’ll need that,” Smoke advised him. “Used up a bit here today.”

He didn’t like going to Arizona to take charge of the turnover of the White Mountain land. He felt even worse when the lacquered carriage he rode in jolted to an unexpected halt.

“Woah up, Mabel, woah, Henry, hold in,” the driver crooned to his team. “What the hell do we have here?” he asked next.

“Yes,” Miguel Selleres called from the interior of the coach. “What do we have? Why did you stop out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“It’s—it’s . . . I think it’s Quint Stalker and some of his boys.”

“They are supposed to be in Arizona,” Selleres shot back.

“Well, we’re here,” came the familiar voice of Quint Stalker, noticeably weakened.

Selleres poked a head out of the curtained window. Four men, without horses, all wounded, all dirty and powder-grimed, stood at the side of the road. Astonishment painted Selleres’ face. He had never seen the proud, gamecock Stalker so bedraggled. “How did this happen?” Selleres demanded. “Why are you not in Arizona?”

“We were headed there,” Stalker related glumly.

“Those damned Apaches waited around and hit us a second time. Killed all but us four. And we’re all wearin’ fresh wounds.”

“You have had a hard time. There are some tanques not far ahead. Climb on the top and we’ll ride there. After you’ve cleaned up, you can ride inside with me,” Selleres told them grandly.

“Well, thanks so damned much,
Señor
Selleres,” the aching Quint Stalker replied sarcastically. “Only we ain’t gonna go back out there. No way, no how.”

“Oh, I disagree,
Señor
Stalker.”

His patience tried beyond any semblance of his usual cool nature, Miguel Selleres reached under his coat and drew out a Mendoza copy of the .45 Colt Peacemaker. Slowly he racked back the hammer, as he leveled the weapon on the tip of Quint Stalker’s nose. “You will go back to that Apache reservation with me, or I will shoot you down for the cowardly dog you are.”

Nervously, Quint cut his eyes to his three remaining men. Slowly he shrugged and outstretched both hands, palms up. “Who can argue with such logic?”

Martha Tucker looked at the mound of supplies being carted into the kitchen and the bunkhouse with eyes that shined. The ranch had run dangerously low of nearly everything in the three weeks since her husband’s murder. She clapped her hands in delight, and made much of the small, tin cylinder cans of cinnamon, ground cloves, allspice, and black pepper.

“Now I can bake pies again! What would you like?” That she directed to Smoke Jensen.

“Anything would be fine. I’m pleased you approve of my shopping. It’s not often I do such domestic chores.” 

“And I’ll bet your Sally doesn’t have to send along a list,” Martha praised him delightedly.

Color rose in the cheeks of Smoke Jensen. “No, Mrs. Tucker, but then, Sally usually comes along with me. Watchin’ her is how I learned to pick the best.”

They had ambled off during this exchange. Horizontal purple bars filled the western quarter of the sky, layered with pink, orange, and pale blue. At this altitude, stars already twinkled faintly in the east. Martha Tucker led the way to a circular bench, built around the bole of a huge, old cottonwood. There she turned to face Smoke Jensen.

“I feel that Mr. Jensen and Mrs. Tucker are rather stiff after so much time. May I call you Smoke?”

“If you wish, Martha.” Smoke produced a rueful grin. “You know, it’s funny, but I’ve been thinking of you by your given name for several days now.”

They sat, and each resisted the urge to take the other by the hand. “I don’t wish to seem prying, but could you tell me about your life before now,” Martha urged.

Smoke sat silent for a while, then sighed, and laced his fingers around his right knee, crossed over the left. “I ran away . . . ah, that’s not quite true. My home ran away, from me, when I was twelve. I wandered some, and wound up out on the plains. I was about to get my hair lifted by some Pawnee, when this woolly-looking critter out of hell rose up from the tall grass and shot two braves off their horses with a double-shot Hawken rifle. Dumped two more with another of the same, then banged away with a pair of pistols, which I later learned were sixty caliber Prentiss percussion guns, made in Waterbury, Connecticut. That’s how I met Preacher.”

Smoke went on to relate some of the milder adventures he had encountered as a youth in the keeping of Preacher. Martha listened with rapt attention. When words ran dry for Smoke, she told of her life back East, before she married Lawrence Tucker.

“We had a fine place, right outside Charleston, South Carolina. The War ruined all that, though. I was not yet eighteen, when I met Lawrence. He had come down with the occupation forces of Reconstruction. Like a proper young Southern lady, I hated all Yankees. Yet, Lawrence seemed somehow different.

“He had genuine concern for the well-being of white Southerners. He treated whites and darkies with the same reserve and respect. And I found out later that he didn’t profit a penny’s worth out of the false tax attachment schemes that deprived so many of their land and property.”

“Given the circumstances, I’m surprised you ever got together,” Smoke prompted.

“I had little choice. Lawrence and his staff occupied our plantation house. Daddy had lost a leg at Chancellorsville, and been invalided out of the service. Lawrence insisted from the first day his carpetbaggers moved into the main house, that rent be paid. Only, it was him paying that rent.

“He was young, and a lawyer. He’d only served the last year of the War with the Bluebellies.” Smoke smiled at the use of that term, while Martha paused to order her recollections. “One night at the dinner table, he absolutely astonished the whole family by stating forcefully that the War had been fought for economic reasons and politics, and had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery.”

“Not a popular opinion among our brethren to the north,” Smoke observed.

“I’ll say not. He and Daddy got along famously after that. One day, one of the vilest of carpetbaggers showed up with those falsified documents about back taxes on Crestmar. Lawrence produced a stack of paid receipts, and said those taxes were not due anymore.” A tinkle of laughter brightened her recounter. “He even threatened to have the man run off the plantation by our darkies, who were working then for wages. They were armed with some shotguns and a few Enfield muskets left over from the War. We whites were not permitted to carry arms, even for self-protection, although General Grant said we could.”

A profound change had come over Martha Tucker. She talked like a young girl, when she recalled her life in the South. Her mannerisms also revealed the stereotypical Southern belle. Smoke noted this with not a little discomfort. He saw it as though she were two different persons, the lighthearted one hidden under the burdens of the other. He wondered if it was good for her. To make matters worse, he received a strong impression that she was flirting with him.

“I’ve enjoyed this talk of old times, Martha. No offense, but right now, my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.”