Cunning of the Mountain Man (21 page)

“Oh, my! What a ninny,” Martha babbled, the Old South sloughing off her speech as she rose. “I’ll see to supper right away. The children will be starved too. And thank you for confiding in me about your past life.”

Smoke Jensen heaved a long sigh of relief as Martha Tucker headed toward the kitchen. A soft chuckle came from the far side of the tree trunk, and Jeff York stepped into view. “That one’s fallin’ in love.”

“You can go straight to hell, Jeff York,” Smoke growled as he came to his boots.

Awakening at the palest of dawn light, Miguel Selleres drew a deep breath, redolent with sage and yucca blooms. He immediately understood why Benton-Howell coveted this land so much. Very like the valleys of the Sierra Madre Occidental, where he had grown up. A moment later he received a lesson in why it was not wise for white-eyes to desire this vista of pinon-shrouded mesas.

Some twenty-seven Apache warriors—in varying sizes from short and squat to tall and square, painted for war— rose up to fire a volley of arrows into the camp erected by the seven men who had accompanied Miguel Selleres and Quint Stalker’s survivors. The whirring messengers of death had barely begun to descend on the unsuspecting white interlopers, when a ragged fusillade of rifle fire erupted, shattering the quiet of early morning.

With grim silence, the Apaches swarmed down into camp on the tail of their surprise opening. Shouts of confusion and alarm came from the sleep-dulled outlaws. Only their leader had the presence of mind to make a positive move. Miguel Selleres unlimbered his Mendoza .45, and shot the nearest Apache through the breastbone. He then came to his boots and made directly for his carriage.

Unlike most of its contemporaries, fashioned by the skilled wainwrights of Durango, it did not have sides and a roof of thick oak planking. Sandwiched between layers of veneer, strong sheets of steel—fashioned from the boiler plates of a wrecked locomotive on the
Ferocarril de Zacatecas
—made it nearly impregnable. Even the curtained windows had bulletproof shutters. Miguel Selleres reached his goal, along with Quint Stalker, who knew about the construction of the coach. They entered secured the doors and shutters, and began to pick targets among the attacking Indians.

Durango’s coach makers had provided firing ports, not so much for fighting off Apaches, but for bandits. They well knew the requirements of the rich and powerful in their own country. The armored vehicle withstood assaults from arrow, lance, ball, and stone war club. Many who attacked it died for their efforts. A growing volume of firepower drove off the Apaches after a closely fought five minutes.

“Did you think to bring some water and grub?” Quint asked anxiously, when the shooting dwindled to long-range sniping.

“Under the seat. There’s extra ammunition, tambien." “You think of everything,
Señor
Selleres.”

“Not everything, or I would not be in here, with those cursed devils outside.”

Quint Stalker actually cracked a smile, and his troubled countenance brightened. “That shines! I like a man with a sense of humor in tough situations.”

“You flatter me. Help yourself to my humble repast.” 

Stalker dug into the wicker hamper inside the hinged rear seat. He pulled out a cloth bag of
machaca
—shredded dry beef, Mexican style—another of parched corn, a tin can of bean paste, and another of peaches. “We’re gonna feast like kings,” he exclaimed with delight.

“The men won’t fare so well, unless they gather up what the indios failed to destroy. I suggest you order them to bring everything they can, and form defenses around my carriage. We could use two more guns in here. The rest can form barricades from rocks, saddles and . . .” Selleres winced, “dead horses.”

Mid-morning came and the situation had changed little. It had grown blood-boiling hot inside the coach. Great wet patches showed under the arms of the occupants and along their spines. Several of the hard-bitten outlaws had managed to round up enough horses to harness the carriage and provide transportation for the survivors, if some rode double. Miguel Selleres noted that spirits had risen considerably. Then Fate struck them cruelly again.

This time, when the Apaches charged, the solid drum of shod hooves joined in the whisper rush of moccasin soles. A dozen Arizona Rangers, led by Tallpockets Granger, stormed the mesa top and the desperate hard cases who had been trapped there. A steady swath of bullets made a drum of the inside of the carriage.

Desperation added its own brand of discipline to the forlorn outlaw band. When the Apaches crashed into the improvised barricades, the white vermin reversed their rifles and used them for clubs. Winchesters bashed Apache heads, broke ribs, slowed the advance, and low-held six-guns blazed a clear path through the throng.

Miguel Selleres spotted it first. The reins of the team had been threaded through a narrow, hinged slot near the roof of the coach. Selleres handed them to one hard case and shouted through a riskily opened window.

“Get this team going. Surround the coach and ride for it. That’s our only chance.”

“That was damned Arizona Rangers out there fightin’ alongside the Apaches,” Quint Stalker observed in a wounded tone. “What they takin’ the redskins’ side for?”

Miguel Selleres gave him a droll look. “Perhaps our bought politicians have not been able to accomplish all they promised. Or they aren’t honest.”

“What’s a honest politician?” Quint asked never having known of one.

“One who, when he’s been bought, stays bought by the same people,” Selleres answered glibly.

“Oooh, hell, here they come again,” Stalker groaned as he slammed the shutters tight.

At once the two outlaws at the lead team spurred their mounts and got the armored vehicle in motion. Firing to their sides, they fought clear of the horde that rushed at them. Driving blind the border trash who held the reins expected at any instant for the carriage to turn over. Bouncing and swaying, he kept erect as the seconds, then the minutes passed.

“Ohmygod!” he gulped in a rush, as the coach canted downward onto the trail off the mesa.

“I think . . . we have . . . made it,” Quint Stalker muttered in wonder.

“
¡
Gracias a Dios!
I do believe we have,” Miguel Selleres breathed out softly.

* * *

Tallpockets Granger watched the heavy carriage lumber down the steeply inclined trail and called in his detachment of Rangers. Most of the tough, Arizona-wise lawmen cautiously eyed the charged-up Apaches, who also broke off pursuit. An explosive situation could erupt at any second Tallpockets knew, yet he had to fight an amused smirk as he made known his plan. Using the
Tinde
language, which he had learned as a child, he made a stunning announcement to Cuchillo Negro and his warriors.

“Black Knife, I want you and your braves to raise their right hands. Yeah, that’s the one. Good. Now, do you swear to uphold the laws of the Territory of Arizona, obey the orders of the law chief over you, and keep the peace as directed? Answer,
enju
.”

“
Wadest,
what is this you are doing,
shee-kizzen?
” Cuchillo Negro asked, calling Tallpockets White Clay— the name he had earned as a boy when his father was agent to the White Mountain people—and calling him blood brother.

“Why, I’m making you my deputies,
shee-kizzen
.” Black Knife’s reaction began as a grin, grew into a broad smile, and ended in a deep belly laugh. “
Enju-enju
—yes, yes,” he responded. “I never believed I’d live to see this day.”

Tallpockets, who at six-foot-five truly fit the name, pulled a perplexed expression. “General Crook organized two companies of Apache scouts for the Army, so why can’t the Rangers take you on?”

“For what purpose?”

“To track down those white lice and squash them,” the long-faced Tallpockets stated levelly, his one brown and one blue eye glinting with his anger. He had heard of what had been done to the Tinde children.

Tension evaporated as the rest of the Tinde offered their oaths and went among the Rangers clasping forearms in the Apache fashion. Tallpockets stood beside his blood brother and accepted the fealty of the warriors, all the while glancing at the fading streamer of dust that marked the course of the outlaws. At last his patience wore thin.

“Let’s mount up and go after that slime.”

Sir Geoffrey Benton-Howell received two pieces of extremely bad news at the same time. The rider from town brought him word of the shoot-out in the Hang Dog, and a telegram, sent in haste from Springerville, Arizona Territory. He listened in a growing storm of rage.

“It was Smoke Jensen, right enough. Enough folks recognized him while the shootin’ was goin’ on, and when he rode out of town. He was with a buckboard from the Tucker ranch.”

“WHAT!”
Benton-Howell bellowed.

“He was with some riders who drove a Tucker ranch buckboard.”

“I heard what you said fellow, I just could not believe it. We worked so hard to convince that foolish woman that Smoke Jensen had killed her husband. How could she do this?”

“He didn’t kill Tucker?”

“Of course not, you lout,” Benton-Howell snapped, his control rapidly slipping. “One of Quint Stalker’s men, Forrest Gore, did the job, and bungled it mightily I might add. Wait here while I read this, then I will have some instructions for you.”

Benton-Howell slit the yellow envelope and pulled the message form. His face went crimson with each word that leaped from the page. Miguel Selleres defeated and put to route by a band of Apaches and the Arizona Rangers? His mind refused to accept it. The Arizona Rangers? Impossible. That made it even more important to end this matter with the Tucker woman at once.

“Rocky, I want you to round up five or six men, and ride over to keep a watch on the Tucker ranch. Better take enough to send messages back, for that matter. What you will be looking for is the next time Smoke Jensen leaves there. You are to send word to me, and then go in and apprehend the widow and her children. We’re going to make them disappear from the face of the earth, and then take that ranch.”

Smoke Jensen turned away from the window that overlooked the dooryard of the Tucker ranch. “I’m not satisfied with the results of the visits to Benton-Howell’s ranch. We need to take the fight to what’s left of Stalker’s men around Socorro. The four of us can get them mightily stirred up.”

“How you figure to work it?” Jeff York asked.

“We’ll split up, cover more area that way. You and Walt, Ty Hardy and I.”

“Must you do this?” Martha Tucker asked with almost wifely concern as she entered the room.

“I’m afraid so. I don’t figure this Englishman for being stupid. His partner’s smart enough from what I’ve heard” Smoke explained. “They’ll figure out sooner or later that the only place we can be is here. I want to keep the fighting away from you and your youngsters.” “I’m grateful for that, Smoke, but the risk . . . ?” 

Smoke gave her a smile just short of indulgent. “I’ve taken risks before and come out all right.” He didn’t mention the scars that crisscrossed his body, or the eyes swollen shut and blackened by hard knuckles, the loose teeth and split lips. “We’ll head out in half an hour,” he told Jeff.

Not unexpectedly, Jimmy Tucker wanted to ride along. When the four gunfighters—Ty Hardy just a beginner— had mounted up, Jimmy came to them and blurted out his wishes. Smoke Jensen looked down at the lad long and hard.

“That’s not possible, Jimmy. Although they’re hardly the best of a sorry lot, it’s no place for you to be. You’re good enough with a gun to protect your mother and the other kids, so your place is to stay here and do just that.”

Jimmy made a face like he might cry, then turned away. “Awh . . . hell, I never get to do anything,” he muttered.

Smoke Jensen withheld his sympathetic chuckle until they had ridden away from the ranch headquarters. When he looked back at the crest of a low rise, Martha and Jimmy were waving at them with equal enthusiasm.

Forrest Gore slid the brass telescope closed and slipped it in the case hung from his saddle horn. “They’re long gone, and nothing’s stirring around the bunkhouse or corrals. You boys spread out, take your time, so’s we can hit them from all sides at once. Today’s washday, so the woman’ll be out in the yard. If we cut her off from the house, we won’t have any troubles at all.”

For once it worked exactly like Gore wanted it. He and seven men swarmed down on the Tucker ranch, and caught Martha Tucker at the clothes line. Arms above her head a sheet flapping in the breeze, she did not have a chance to reach for the rifle that leaned against one upright of the drying rack. Two men literally plucked her off the ground and rode away.

After her first, startled yelp, Martha shouted desperately, “Run, Jimmy!”

Only Jimmy Tucker did not obey. He dived for his own rifle and came up with the lever action cycling. The other five men, led by Forrest Gore, closed in on the children. A slug cracked over Gore’s head, close enough to make him cringe. He still smarted from the pellet wounds given him by Smoke Jensen. Three of the Tucker hands got into the fight a moment later.

Outnumbered by the outlaws, one went down almost at once, as Marv Fletcher blasted him in the center of his chest. A second gunhand took a bullet in the leg and lay helplessly under the guns of the Stalker gang. The third hunkered down behind a large water tank and fired at those surrounding his friend.

After Vern Fletcher took a slug in his shoulder, Arlan Grubbs got around behind the wrangler and shot him in the back. Jimmy got off another round before the broad chest of a lathered horse knocked him off his bare feet.

Forrest Gore dismounted swiftly and wrestled the rifle from the boy’s grasp. Then he backhanded Jimmy hard enough to loosen teeth. Quickly he tied the boy’s hands and feet. With a grunt of effort, he booted the dazed lad onto the crupper of his saddle. Shrieks of fear from Rose and Tommy Tucker cut through the rumble of hooves. Dust swirled in the abandoned yard, as the outlaws rode off with their prisoners.

“What do we do with ’em?” a snaggle-toothed hard case asked.