Heart of the Mountain Man (19 page)

Monte looked up at her. “I know, I just don't want anyone hurt on account of me.”

She nodded. “Then work as hard as you can to make our defenses as good as you can. That's all anyone here expects.”

26

Jim Slaughter was in the process of folding up his ground blanket and sleeping bag when he heard what sounded like hoofbeats coming from the mountain slope on the east side of the camp.

He straightened up, his hand going to the butt of his pistol, and looked toward the sound. He could see nothing through the heavy morning mist, which hung close to the ground like dense fog. Though the sun was peeking over the horizon, it shed little warmth and even less light through the haze.

He glanced over his shoulder toward the campfire and saw that most of his men were still milling around, grabbing biscuits and beans and coffee, most of them still half asleep at this early hour.

Damn,
he thought,
we're all targets out here with no sentries left to stand guard.
“Whitey,” he called, pulling his pistol and grabbing his rifle from his saddle boot on the ground.

“Yeah, Boss?” Whitey answered from over near the fire.

Before he could reply, four shapes materialized out of the fog like crazed ghosts on a fierce rampage, orange blossoms of flame exploding from the guns they held in their hands.

Their faces were covered with bandannas and their hats were pulled low over their faces as they rode straight into the knot of men around the campfire, shooting as fast as they could pull the triggers.

David Payne, a gunny from Missouri who'd ridden with Quantrill's Raiders, drew his pistol and got off one shot before a bullet took him in the throat and flung him backward into the fire, scattering embers and ashes into the air.

Jim Harris, a tough from Texas who'd fought in the Lincoln County War, had his gun half out of his holster when two slugs tore through his chest, blowing blood and pieces of lung on the men next to him. He only had time for a surprised grunt before he hit the ground, dead.

Slaughter's men scattered as fast as their legs could carry them, some diving to the ground, others trying to hide behind trees or saddles on the ground as the marauders galloped through camp.

An ex-Indian scout called Joe Scarface managed to get his rifle cocked, and was aiming it at one of the riders, when an explosion from the direction of the mountainside was followed by a large-caliber bullet plowing into his back between his shoulder blades, which lifted him off the ground like a giant hand and threw him facedown in the dirt, a hole you could put your fist through in his chest.

“Goddamn!” Slaughter yelled, glancing over his shoulder. They were under attack from all sides, it seemed. He dove to the ground behind his saddle as one of the riders, a big man with broad shoulders on a big, roan-colored horse with snow-white hips, rode right at him.

He buried his face in the soft loam of the ground, and felt rather than saw the bullets from the big man's pistols tear into his saddle and the ground around him as the giant Palouse jumped over him. Miraculously, he was unhit.

“Shit!” he said, spitting dirt and leaves out of his mouth. He recognized that horse. It was the one Johnny West had been riding in Jackson Hole. So he was one of the bastards who'd been killing his men all along. The son of a bitch had played him for a fool.

Whitey Jones ran for his saddle, hunched over, expecting a bullet in his back the whole way. As he bent to grab his Greener shotgun, one of the raiders rode by, his pistol pointing at the albino.

Whitey whirled, pointing his express gun just as the rider fired. The bullet grazed Whitey's cheek and tore a chunk out of his left ear, spinning him around and snapping his head back, blood spurting into his eyes and blinding him momentarily.

Ike Mayhew, one of the men who'd joined Slaughter's gang in Jackson Hole, snapped off two quick shots and saw one of the riders flinch as one of his slugs hit home. He grinned, and had eared back the hammer for another shot when the man he'd hit leaned to the side and fired point-blank into his face. Mayhew's head exploded in a fine, red mist as the .44-caliber bullet blew his brains into his hat.

Two more explosions from the distant mountainside sent two more men to the ground, one dead and one with his left arm dangling from a shattered bone. Milt Burnett screamed in pain as he grabbed his flopping arm and went to his knees, just as a gray-and-white Palouse rode directly over him, its hooves pounding his chest to pulp. He died choking on bloody froth from a ruptured lung.

Whitey sleeved blood out of his eyes and rolled onto his stomach, pointing his ten-gauge at the back of a raider and letting go with both barrels. Just as he fired, Ben Brown, one of the men who'd been with Slaughter for several years, stepped between them, his arm outstretched as he aimed his pistol.

Whitey's double load of buckshot hit Brown square in the back, blowing him almost in half as he spun around, dead before he hit the ground.

Swede, too far from his saddle to get his gun, pulled his long knife out and stood there, waiting as a rider rode down on him. He bared his teeth and screamed a defiant yell, holding the knife out in front of him.

The rider's eyes grew wide as he saw the man had no gun and he held his fire, lashing out with his leg and catching Swede in the mouth with a pointed boot as he raced by, knocking out several of his teeth and putting out Swede's lights as his head snapped back and he somersaulted backward, unconscious.

Jimmy Silber, thoughts of his thousand-dollar bonus still in his mind, fired pistols with both hands, crouched near the fire. When his guns were empty, he bent over to punch out his empties. Then a sound made him turn his head.

He looked up just as a young man on a gray horse rode toward him. The last thing Jimmy saw was a tongue of orange from the man's pistol as the slug tore the left side of his face off and left him standing there, dead on his feet.

* * *

The entire firefight lasted only four or five minutes, but to the men of Slaughter's command it seemed like hours before the four riders rode off into the mist, disappearing as quickly and as silently as they'd arrived, leaving bodies lying all over the Wyoming countryside.

Slaughter got to his feet, brushing dirt and leaves and sweat off his face. Whitey was twenty feet away, squatting over the prone body of Swede, shaking his shoulder to see if he was alive.

Slaughter looked around him as he walked toward his two lieutenants. He counted five or six dead and several more so severely wounded he knew they'd either be dead soon or of no use to him in his quest for the fifty thousand dollars.

“Whitey, how's Swede?” he asked, standing over the two.

Whitey turned his head, and Slaughter saw a bleeding furrow along his left cheek and most of his ear missing. Blood was streaming down Whitey's face, but it wasn't spurting, so Slaughter figured he'd be all right, though quite a bit uglier than he was before.

“Looks like he's lost most of his front teeth and he may have a broken jaw,” Whitey said, shaking Swede's shoulder.

The big man finally opened his eyes, wincing at the pain the movement caused him. He rolled to the side and spat out pieces of teeth along with blood and mucus. “Goddamn,” he mumbled, barely understandable, “what the hell hit me?”

“One of those bastards kicked you in the face,” Whitey said. “I saw the whole thing. He had you dead in his sights and instead of blowing your head off, he tried to kick it off when he seen you didn't have no gun.”

Swede mumbled something else, but Slaughter couldn't quite get it. “What'd he say?” he asked.

Whitey grinned. “He said the son of a bitch is gonna wish he'd shot him if he ever sees him again.”

Slaughter walked to the campfire and poured himself a cup of coffee, looking around him at the mess the attackers had made of his command. “Well, from the looks of things, we'll probably be seein' more of'em than we want to. It don't look like they have any intention of leaving us alone on our way to Colorado.”

Whitey helped Swede to his feet and poured him some water from a canteen. As the big man washed blood and more bits of teeth from his mouth, groaning in pain as he did so, Whitey glanced at Slaughter.

“So, you haven't had enough yet, huh?”

Slaughter pulled his makin's out and began to build himself a cigarette. “Hell, no! This has gone too far for me to quit now. I'm gonna get that money, kill Carson and everybody helping him, and then I'm gonna kill his wife an' his friends an' his dog if he has one. I'm gonna make the sumbitch wish he'd never laid eyes on me.”

Swede looked up, blood dripping from his ruined mouth. “You can count me in on that, Boss. Nobody gets away with doin' this to me, nobody!”

“How about you, Whitey? You in or out?” Slaughter asked.

Whitey shrugged. “Hell, Boss, you know I'm in. I been with you through good times and bad, an' damned if this ain't one of the worst so far . . . but I'm in.”

“Good. Then let's check the men out and see how many we've got left who are able to go on.”

“What are we gonna do about the wounded?” Whitey asked.

“Those that can ride we'll take with us to the next town. Those that can't . . .” He shrugged, as if their fate held little interest for him.

“The other boys may not like that much,” Swede mumbled through swollen lips.

Slaughter whirled on him. “I don't give a good goddamn what the boys like or don't like,” he growled. “They'd better learn to like what I tell them to like or they'll end up just like those other suckers out there, facedown in the dirt as dinner for the worms.”

Swede glanced at Whitey, as if wondering whether Slaughter would show as little concern for
him
if he were seriously wounded.

Whitey gave his head a little shake, letting him know not to pursue the matter any further, and began to wander among the men lying on the ground, looking to see if any were capable of riding.

He rolled Jimmy Silber over, wincing when he saw what was left of his face and head. “Jesus, I guess he won't be seein' any of that thousand-dollar bonus,” Whitey murmured to himself, letting the body fall back to the ground.

After he'd made the rounds and salvaged what wounded men he thought might be able to make the trip, Whitey approached Slaughter, who was still standing by the campfire, drinking coffee, lost in his own thoughts.

“You want me to have the men make up a burial party?” he asked.

Slaughter looked at him like he thought he was crazy. “Hell, no. We're gonna mount up and head on down the trail. Stayin' here is just inviting another attack by West and his cohorts.”

Swede looked up, his eyebrows raised. “West? You mean that big fellow was Johnny West?”

Slaughter nodded. “Yeah. I recognized that big roan Palouse he was ridin'. It was the same one he had in Jackson Hole.”

“I never trusted that son of a bitch,” Whitey said. “I knew he was a ringer from the get-go.”

“Well, he fooled me,” Slaughter said, a wry expression on his face. “Hell, I even tried to hire him.”

“You were right as rain about one thing,” Swede said.

“What's that?”

“He was damn sure a killer. He went through us like grain through a goose an' never got a scratch on him.”

Whitey slapped his pistol in its holster. “He won't be that lucky the next time I see him.”

“If you don't get these men mounted up, we might not live long enough to see that,” Slaughter said, throwing the remainder of his coffee on the fire and turning to saddle up his horse.

27

Two days later, Slaughter and his men rode toward the outskirts of Pueblo, Colorado. They'd lost two of the wounded on the trail already when Roscoe Archer, known throughout Arkansas as “The Butcher,” fell sideways off his horse. He'd taken a bullet in the left arm, which Whitey had bandaged with the outlaw's own bandanna. The arm had since swollen to three times its normal size and was almost black.

Archer screamed when he hit the ground and sat hunched over, holding his injured arm tight against his body. Tears streamed down his face.

Blackjack Tony McCurdy, his partner for the past three years, jumped off his horse and squatted next to his friend.

“Hey, Roscoe,” he said, watching as the other men continued to ride on by. “You got to git up, or they're gonna leave your sorry butt here for sure.”

Roscoe shook his head, rocking back and forth, cradling his arm as if it were a newborn baby he had to protect. “I don't care,” he said, looking at his riding partner through eyes reddened and bloodshot from fever. “I can't stand this pain no longer, Blackjack. You got to help me.”

“Help you? I ain't no doctor, Roscoe. Maybe they got one in that town up yonder that'll fix you up.”

Roscoe shook his head. “Uh-uh, I ain't fixin' to let no sawbones cut my arm off. I can't face going the rest of my life with only one arm.” He hesitated. “You got to put one in me, Blackjack . . . put me outta my misery.”

“I can't do that.”

Roscoe grabbed Blackjack's arm. “I'd do it for you, pal.”

Blackjack gritted his teeth, then suddenly drew his pistol and shot Roscoe in the heart, knocking the big man flat on his back, ending his pain forever.

After a moment of quiet consideration, Blackjack removed Roscoe's boots and tooled leather gun belt, and took all the money he had in his pockets. He took off his own boots and slipped on Roscoe's. “I always did like these handmade boots you got in Del Rio, partner,” he said to the dead man as he hurried to get back on his horse and join the others.

Slaughter glanced back over his shoulder at the men riding behind him. “Damn, we're down to fifteen men. We need to see if we can pick up a few here,” he said, tilting his head at the sign that read, “Pueblo, Colorado.”

Whitey looked around at the town as they entered the city limits. “It looks pretty promising,” he said. “Most mining towns like this have their fair share of hard cases and men who fancy themselves gun hawks.”

“Take the men to the biggest saloon in town. I'm going to have a word with the sheriff.”

“The sheriff?” Swede asked, able to talk a little better now that the swelling had gone down in his face and jaw. He still couldn't eat anything solid and was living on mashed-up beans and biscuits soaked in coffee.

“Yeah. I'm gonna make him an offer that he'll have a hard time turning down.”

While the men proceeded to the nearest saloon, Slaughter reined in before a wooden building with a hand-lettered sign on it reading “JAIL.”

He walked through the door and found a tall, heavyset man with a huge potbelly leaning back in a chair with his feet up on two planks, which were stretched across a couple of beer barrels and evidently served as his desk.

The man spoke around a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. “Yeah? What can I do for you, mister?”

“You the sheriff?” Slaughter asked.

The man looked pointedly at a tin star on his shirt. “You think I'm wearin' this for decoration?” he asked sarcastically.

Slaughter grinned, then slapped the man's feet off the desk and when he started to get to his feet, backhanded him, knocking him spinning back into his chair. As the sheriff grabbed for his gun, Slaughter drew his pistol and stuck the barrel against the sheriff's nose.

“I doubt if they pay you enough to try what you're thinkin' of tryin',” Slaughter growled.

“What . . . what do you want?” the sheriff said, his eyes crossed, fixed on the hole in the end of Slaughter's gun against his face.

“What's your name?”

“Will, Will Durant.”

“Well, Will, I'm here to help you out.”

Durant took his eyes off Slaughter's pistol long enough to give him a disbelieving stare.

“I'm gonna start by putting this back in my holster, but don't even think about tryin' to outdraw me, Will. Men a lot better an' faster'n you have tried an' they're all forked end up now.”

“Who ARE you, mister?”

“My name is Jim Slaughter.”

“Big Jim Slaughter?” the sheriff asked, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

“There's some that calls me that,” Slaughter answered.

“What can I do for ya, Mr. Slaughter?” Durant asked, his face regaining some of its color as Slaughter holstered his Colt.

“It's what we can do for each other, Will. I'm going to give you a hundred dollars, an' you're gonna point out the baddest men in town to me. The ones who give you bad dreams at night. The kind you don't want to run into on a dark night.”

“Why would you want . . .”

Slaughter held up his hand. “Will, don't ask foolish questions. All you have to know is you're gonna be a hundred dollars richer, an' you're gonna have a lot less men you have to worry about in a couple of days.”

Durant grinned weakly. “All right, Mr. Slaughter. Let's take a walk around town an' I'll show you the badasses, an' this stinkin' town's got plenty of 'em.”

* * *

By just after dusk, Slaughter and Sheriff Durant had picked out twenty men who were known to make their living using their guns instead of their wits. As the men were pointed out to him on his rounds with Durant, Slaughter approached each of them and told them to meet him after dark at the Lucky Lady Saloon on the edge of town.

As he walked through the batwings, followed by Whitey and Swede, Slaughter looked around at the saloon, which was little more than a large tent with planks for a bar and whiskey bottles with no labels on them lining the shelves. He shook his head. “What a name for this place.” He laughed. “There isn't a lady in sight, and if there was, no one in their right mind would call her lucky.”

“You got that right, Boss,” Swede said, looking around at the motley crew of men assembled. “I've seen better places than this in ghost towns.”

Slaughter walked to the bar and motioned for the barman to give him a bottle. He took it and banged it on the wood to get the attention of the men sitting around the room so they'd quiet down enough for him to be heard.

“My name's Jim Slaughter,” he said, smiling at the murmur of voices as the men recognized the name. “I've got a little job planned a few miles from here, an' I need to hire some men who know their way around a six-gun, and ain't afraid of usin' it.”

“What kind'a job?” asked a portly man with a full beard.

“The kind where you do what you're told an' you make a lot of money,” Slaughter replied.

“That ain't good enough for me,” the man said belligerently.

Slaughter shook his head, an almost sad look in his eyes. “What's your name, mister?” he asked in a pleasant tone of voice.

“Augustus Skinner. Why do you want to know?”

“So they'll know what to put on the cross over your grave on boot hill,” Slaughter replied, drawing his pistol and pulling the trigger.

The gun exploded, sending an ounce of molten lead hurtling into Augustus Skinner's chest, knocking him backward off his chair to land in the lap of a man sitting behind him.

The men in the room all jumped at the sound of the gunshot, some reaching for pistols, until they saw Whitey ear back the hammers on his ten-gauge Greener and grin at them over the sights.

“Somebody drag that carcass out of here so we can get down to business without it stinkin' up the place,” Slaughter said, holstering his pistol and pulling the cork from his whiskey bottle.

As he took a deep drink, two men grabbed what was left of Augustus Skinner by the heels of his boots and dragged him through the batwings, leaving a trail of blood on the floor. The barman scurried from behind the bar and quickly covered the mess with sawdust.

“Now, are there any other questions?” Slaughter asked.

A man in the back of the room stood up, holding his hands out from his sides so Whitey wouldn't mistake his intentions. “If it wouldn't piss you off too bad, I'd kind'a like to know what the job pays 'fore I sign on,” he said.

Slaughter laughed, as did most of the men in the room. “No, that's perfectly all right. I'm payin' a hundred a month or any part thereof, and there's a bonus of a thousand dollars a man when the job's over.”

“I got one more question,” the man added.

Slaughter frowned impatiently. “Yeah?”

The man grinned. “Where do I sign up?”

As the others in the room laughed, Slaughter held up his hands. “Let me warn you before you all rush up here to join our little group. This is no cakewalk. The men we're goin' up against are tough and are also good with their guns. A lot of you won't be coming back OR collecting the money. It's a dangerous job and that's why the pay is so high.”

“Mr. Slaughter,” another man across the room said, “livin' in this town is dangerous, an' we ain't exactly gettin' paid for it. I'm ready for damn near anything that'll get me a stake so I can get outta here 'fore winter sets in.”

“All right, those of you who are interested, the drinks are on me. The rest of you can leave with no hard feelings.”

Not one of the men left the room. The pay Slaughter was offering was three times what they could earn doing anything else other than mining, and these were not the sort of men to break their backs digging in the mountains around Pueblo hoping to find enough gold or silver for beans and bacon.

Slaughter turned to the bartender. “Set 'em up an' keep 'em comin' till I say enough.”

“Yes, sir!” the barman answered, taking several bottles of amber-colored liquid off the shelves behind him.

None of the men noticed the rather seedy-looking man dressed in buckskins standing outside the batwings, leaning back against the wall and whittling on a stick as if he had nothing better to do with his time.

* * *

As Smoke led his friends toward Big Rock, Louis twisted in his saddle and spoke to Pearlie, riding behind him. “How are you doing with that wound? Is it showing any signs or symptoms of suppuration?”

Pearlie stretched his neck and moved his left arm around in a circle to see if there was any pain or soreness. He'd taken a bullet that skimmed along the skin over his left shoulder blade, burning a furrow half an inch deep but not penetrating any deeper. Though the wound wasn't serious, Smoke and the others were worried about infection.

“No, Louis, it seems to be healin' up right nice. A tad stiff, but no more'n you'd expect.”

As he spoke, Pearlie noticed Cal had a wide grin on his face.

“What'a you find so funny, Cal?” he asked suspiciously.

“Oh, a thought just sort'a occurred to me,” the boy answered.

“Since when did you start thinkin', Cal?” Pearlie asked. “You ain't got a brain in that empty head of your'n.”

“Well, it just seemed kind'a funny to me,” he answered. “The four of us rode through them outlaws, guns blazin' and goin' off all around us, an' you the onliest one got shot.”

“So?”

“So . . . maybe I ain't the only lead magnet around now. It might just be that you're gonna take my place as the one always seems to take a bullet ever' time we git in a fight.”

Smoke and Louis looked at each other, smiling. It was good to see the boys back to normal, bitching and arguing with each other as only the best of friends could.

“I don't see it that way, Cal,” Pearlie said.

“Why not?”

“Way I see it, this here bullet I took was probably headed for you, sure as hell, an' I just sort'a got in the way.”

“You sayin' you took lead that was meant for me?”

Pearlie nodded. “Yeah, so that means you owe me for savin' you the misery of gittin' shot again.”

Cal stared at Pearlie through narrowed eyes. “If'n that's so, an' I ain't sayin' it is, mind you, I bet I know what you think I ought'a give you for savin' me.”

“What's that, Cal?”

“I bet lettin' you have my share of the first batch of bear sign Miss Sally makes when we git home would square things.”

Pearlie pursed his lips as he considered this. “Well, now, that just might make things right between us.”

Cal shook his head, grinning. “Forgit it, Pearlie. I been thinkin' on those bear sign for the past hundred miles. The worst thing 'bout bein' away from home all these weeks has been missin' Miss Sally's cookin', so you ain't gittin' none of MY bear sign, no, sirree!”

As he listened to the boys banter back and forth, Smoke thought,
I miss you too, Sally, but it's not your cooking I miss the most!