Cunning of the Mountain Man (3 page)

“No, a lariat will do,” Forrest Gore sniggered. “Cut into his neck some that way.”

“We’d best be making time, then,” another man suggested. “Who all is with us?”

Twenty-five voices shouted allegiance.

“I’ll go wind up the fellers at Donahue’s,” Finney informed them. “Take about half an hour, I’d say. Then we do it.”

Covered by the shouts of approval, Ty Hardy leaned toward his companions. “Oh-oh, it looks like the boil’s comin’ to a head.”

“Best we think fast about some way to lance it,” Walt Reardon prompted.

“Yeah, an’ quick,” Rip Banning urged.

Long, gold shafts of late afternoon sunlight slanted into the office above the Cattlemen’s Union Bank. Dust motes rose as a strong breeze battered the desert-shrunken window sashes and found the way inside. Crystal decanters sat squat on a mahogany sideboard; glasses had been positioned precisely in front of the three very different men who sat around the rectangular table.

Seated at one end, head cocked to the side, listening to the growing uproar from the saloons down the street, Geoffrey Benton-Howell pursed his thin lips in appreciation. Tufts of gray hair sprouted at each temple, creating a halo effect in the sunbeams, the rest of the tight helmet remained a lustrous medium brown. Long, pale, aristocratic fingers curled around the crystal glass, and he raised it to his lips.

Smacking them in appreciation, he spoke into what had become a long silence. “It appears that our designs prosper.” Geoffrey’s accent, although modulated by years in the American West, retained a flavor of the Midlands of England. “Miguel, you were wise indeed to suggest we take the sheriff into our confidence. It sounds to me that he is an inventive fellow.”

Miguel Selleres glowed in the warm light of this praise. “
Gracias
,
Don
Geoffrey.
Mi amigos
, I would safely suggest that we have killed two birds, so to speak, with a single stone.”

Although not quite as much the dandy as Benton-Howell, Selleres dressed expensively and had the air of a Mexican grandee. Short of stature, at five feet and six inches, he had the grace and build of a matador. Age had not told on him, though already in his mid-forties; he seemed every bit at home in this rough frontier town as in the salon of a stately hacienda. One side of his short-waisted, deep russet coat bulged with the .45 Mendoza copy of the Colt Peacemaker, which he wore concealed.

“
Señor
Selleres,” the third man at the table said, pronouncing the name in the Spanish manner; Say-yer-res. “What, exactly, are you getting at?”

“May I answer that, Miguel?” Benton-Howell interrupted when he saw his partner’s danger signal, a writhing of his pencil-line mustache.

“Go right ahead,
Señor
Geoffrey,” Selleres grunted, containing his anger.

“What he’s getting at, Dalton, is that Tucker is out of our way, with the perfect man to pin it on.”

“Umm. You do make things so much clearer, Geoff,” Dalton Wade said with a lip curl, to make clear his attitude toward Miguel Selleres.

Miguel Selleres cut his jet-black eyes from one partner to the other. He saw affability in the expensive clothing and impeccable manners of Geoffrey Benton-Howell, whom he had referred to as Sir Geoffrey. His obvious affluence radiated security to their ambitious goals.

Across the table from him sat a man Miguel thought ill-suited to their company. Although he masked it with sugared words and no overt insult, Dalton Wade’s intense dislike of anyone or anything Mexican radiated from his pig face in waves of almost physical force. His swelling paunch matched his heavy jowls, and emphasized his porcine appearance. Wade dressed in the tacky manner of a local banker—which he was—in a rumpled suit of dark blue with too wide pinstripes. Miguel Selleres felt a genuine wave of revulsion rise within himself. Like a seller of secondhand buggies, Miguel thought with a conscious effort to throttle his rising gorge. It further angered him to acknowledge that he was the youngest of this unholy trio.

“In light of our obvious success, Id suggest that you contact Quint Stalker and ensure that he moves with dispatch on the properties we desire,” Selleres aimed at Wade.

“It has already been done,” Wade snapped, barely in the boundaries of civility.

Benton-Howell stepped in to keep the peace. “Let me expand on that. As we speak, Stalker and some of his men should be acquiring the trading post at Twin Mesas. When that is accomplished, they will move on to the next, and the next. So there is little left we must address today. However, I have come upon a third benefit we can count as ours in this affair.”

“Oh, really? What’s that?” Dalton Wade remained cool, even to the man to whom he was beholden for being included in the grand design.

“Why, the most obvious of all, gentlemen. I propose a toast to us—the men who are about to put an end to Smoke Jensen.”

Sheriff Jake Reno eased his belly through the doorway to his office in the Socorro jail. His small, dusty boots made a soft pattering on the floorboards, as he crossed to a tiny cubicle set in the wall that divided the office from the cellblock. He poked his head in the open doorway and grunted at a snoozing Ferdie Biggs.

“Open up, Ferdie. I want to talk with that back-shooter.”

A line of drool glistened on Ferdie’s ratlike face. It flashed as he wobbled the sleep out of his head and came to his boots. “Sure ’nuff, Boss. You gonna give him what for?”

“Do you mean beat hell out of him? No. No entertainment for you this afternoon, Ferdie. I only want to talk to him.”

Disappointment drooped Ferdie Biggs’s face. He reached for a ring of keys and unlocked the laced strap iron door that opened the cellblock for the sheriff. Reno stalked along the corridor, until he reached the cell that held Smoke Jensen.

Smoke reclined on his bunk, head propped up by both forearms. He didn’t even open an eye at the sound of the lawman’s approach. Heedless of possible damage to the weapon, Reno banged a couple of bars with the barrel of his Merwin and Hulbert. When the bell tone faded, Smoke opened one eye.

“What?” he asked with flat, hard menace.

“I come to get a confession out of you, Jensen.”

“Fat chance. I didn’t do anything.”

“Sure of that, are you?” Reno probed.

“Yes. I’m sure I didn’t back-shoot that man.”

“You don’t sound all that positive to me.”

“Sheriff, I’m not sure about what exactly happened to me, how I got here, or when, but I do know that I have never deliberately back-shot a man in my life.”

“Smoke Jensen, gunfighter and outlaw and he’s never shot a man in the back before? I find that hard to believe. You’re pretending, Jensen. I know it and so do you.” 

“Humor me, Sheriff. Tell me about it.”

Taken aback, Sheriff Jake Reno gulped a deep breath. “All right. If it will help you see the light and give me a confession. It happened last night, about ten-thirty. Some shots were heard by customers in the Hang Dog Saloon. They rushed out to find out what was going on. In the alley at the edge of town, they came upon a body lying on the ground, and you.

“You were cold as a blowed-out lamp. The body was dead,” Reno explained further.

“Mr. Tucker?”

Reno brightened. “Then you do admit knowing him?” “No. Your jailer gave me the name early this morning.”

“That idiot. Handed you a way out on a platter, didn’t he? I’ll fix his wagon later. Yes, it was Mr. Lawrence Tucker, a highly popular and respected local rancher.

He’d been shot. You were laying not far from him, with a .45 in your hand.”

“I don’t carry a .45,” Smoke began to protest.

“You had it in your hand, damnit,” Reno snapped. Then he drew a deep breath to regain his composure. “It had been fired twice. There were two bullet holes in Mr. Tucker’s back. End of case.”

“That’s ridiculous, Sheriff.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes. I normally carry a .44. Two of them, in fact.” “Don’t matter, Jensen. No ,44s were found anywhere around you, or on Mr. Tucker, and no double rig. Your cartridge belt had a pocket for only one iron, and that .45 fit in it like in a glove.”

“Did you or anyone recognize the gun and belt, Sheriff? Ever see it before?”

But Reno had already turned away. Over a shoulder he softly purred his last words for Smoke, Jensen. “I’d like to stay and chat, Jensen, but I have important business outside town. You all just sit tight, an’ we’ll get you hanged all legal and proper.”

Hank Yates turned from the batwings of the Hang Dog Saloon. “He’s ridin’ out of town now.”

A wide grin turned the cruel, thin line of Payne Finney’s mouth into something close to happy. Leave it to Jake Reno to cover himself. “Good. Now, boys, we can really get to work. Some of you go out the back way and wait in the alley between here an’ the saddler’s. The rest come with me. Spread out across the street and hold yer place, while I go get the fellers from Donahue’s.”

“You really think we can just walk down there and take Jensen out?” Yates asked doubtful.

Finney started for the door as he spoke. “Matter of fact, I know we can.”

With a surge of action, the men in the saloon obeyed Finney’s commands. For a moment, their alcoholic confusion marred any smooth departure, as men bumped into one another aimed in opposite directions. They ironed it out quickly enough and left the barroom almost empty. All except for three men at the corner table they had occupied since the establishment opened.

“I think weti best stay here awhile,” Walt Reardon suggested.

“We’ve gotta do something to help,” Rip Banning urged his face nearly the color of his flaming hair.

“We will. In due time.”

“Dangit, Walt, every second means more danger.”

“Relax, Rip. Those boys have got to get all fired up with more whiskey and brave words, before they do anything drastic. Believe me, I know. I’ve been on the receiving end of more’n one lynch mob.”

Neither Ty nor Rip wanted to dispute Walt over that. Rip eased back in his chair and stared balefully at the front doors. Ty examined his empty beer schooner. Walt eyed the Regulator clock on the wall above the bar. Sound exploded inside the barroom, as boot heels drummed on the planks of the porch outside.

Two rough-looking characters burst in, demanding bottles of whiskey. They took no note of the trio in the corner. After they left, Walt and the other two waited out ten long, tense minutes. Then Walt eased his six-gun from leather and put the hammer on half-cock. He rotated the cylinder to the empty chamber and inserted another cartridge. Then he closed the loading gate and returned his weapon to the holster.

“Rip, you go fetch our gear, an’ go saddle up the horses.”

Rip nodded and departed. Then Walt turned to Tyrell Hardy. “Ty, why don’t you slip out the back door and go to the hotel. Bring our long guns back with you.”

“Sure, Walt, right away.” Ty Hardy was gone faster than his words.

Smoke Jensen heard the ruckus coming from the saloons and correctly interpreted its meaning. He needed to find some way out of this, before they drank enough liquid courage to come and do what they wanted to do. He had to think. He had to find out what had happened after the middle of the previous afternoon, when he and his hands arrived in Socorro.

“We checked into a hotel,” Smoke muttered softly to himself. “Got our gear settled in the rooms, then stopped off at a saloon for a drink before supper.” It felt like invisible hands were ringing his mind like a washcloth. “What did we eat? Where?”

The silence of the jail and in his mind mocked him. Smoke came up on his boots and paced the small space allowed in his tiny cell. “Something Mexican,” he spoke to the wall. “Stringy beef, cooked in tomatoes, onions, and chili peppers.
Bist
é
k ranchero
, that’s it.”

A loud shout interrupted his train of thought. One voice rose above the others, clear though distant; the cadence that of someone making a speech. It floated on the hot Socorro air through the small window high in his cell.

“I knew Lawrence Tucker for fifteen years. From when he first moved to these parts. He was a good man. Tough as nails when he had to be, but a good father and husband. Know his wife, too. An’ those kids, why they’re the most polite, hard-working, reverent younguns you’d ever want to know.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” another voice joined the first. “Larry smoked cigars, like y’all know. Right fancy ones, from a place called Havana. Now, I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy a box of those special cigars for the first man who fits a rope around the neck of Smoke Jensen!”

Loud cheering rose like a tidal wave. Smoke Jensen stared unbelievingly at the stone wall and gritted his teeth. The testimonials went on, and Smoke could visualize the bottles being passed from hand to hand. In his mind he could see the faces, flushed with whiskey and blood-lust, growing shiny with sweat, as the crowd became a mob.

“In the fifteen years Lawrence Tucker has been here,” the first orator went on, “he never done a mean or vicious thing. Oh, he shot him a few Apaches, and potted a couple of lobo wolves who wandered down from the San Cristobals, but he never traded shots with another man, white or Mezkin. Didn’t hardly ever even raise his voice. Yet, he was respected, and his hands obeyed him. If it wasn’t for havin’ to tend the stock and protect the ranch, they’d be here now, you can count on that. And they’d be shoutin’ loudest of any to hang that back-shooting sumbitch higher than Haymen.”

More cheers. The whiskey, and the rhetoric, were doing their job.

Smoke Jensen climbed on the edge of the bunk and stretched to see beyond the walls of his prison. It did him little good. He found that his cell fronted on the brick wall of a two-story bakery. It had been the source of the tormenting aromas since his awakening. So far he had received not one scrap of food—only that swill laughingly called coffee, shortly after first light.

Never one to worship food, Smoke’s belly cramped constantly now at the yeasty scent of baking bread and sugary accompaniment of pies and cakes. No doubt, the sadistic Biggs had placed him in this cell deliberately, and denied him anything to eat. For a moment it had taken his mind off his very real danger.