Journey of the Mountain Man (21 page)

“Lanny, let's get out of here,” a man called. “He ain't gonna get Jensen. The man's a devil.”

“He's one man, dammit!” Lanny yelled. “Just one man, that's all.”

“Then you take him, Lanny.” The outlaw's voice had a note of finality in it. “'Cause I'm gone.”

Lanny cursed the man.

“Jensen, I'm hauling my freight,” Hayes called. “I hope I don't never seen you no more. Not that I've seen you this day,” he added wearily.

Another horse's hooves were added to those already riding down the trail, away from this devil some called the last mountain man.

Smoke remained in his position as Lanny, Woody, and a few more wasted a lot of ammunition, knocking holes in trees and burning the air.

Smoke calmly chewed on a piece of jerky and waited.

Smoke had carefully noted the positions of those left. Five of them. He had heard their names called out. Woody, Dalton, Lodi, Sutton, and Lanny Ball.

The outlaws had tried to bait Smoke, cursing him, voicing what they were going to do to his wife and kids. Filthy things, inhuman things. Smoke lay under the jumble of logs and kept his thoughts to himself. If he had even whispered them, the white-hot fury might have set the logs blazing.

After more than two hours, Sutton called, “I think he's gone, Lanny. I think he suckered us and pulled out and set up a new position.”

“I think he's right, Lanny,” Woody yelled. “You know his temper; all them things we been sayin' about his wife would have brought him out like a bear.”

Sutton abruptly stood up for a few seconds, then dropped to the ground. Lodi did the same, followed by the rest of them, and cautiously, tentatively, the outlaws stood up and began walking toward each other. Lanny was the last one to stand up.

He began cursing the rotten luck, the country, the gods of fate, and most of all, he cussed Smoke Hensen.

Smoke emptied his rifle into Lodi, Sutton, Dalton, and Woody, knocking them spinning and screaming to the littered earth.

Lanny hit the ground.

Smoke had dragged Danny's fancy rifle to him with a stick. Dropping his empty Winchester, Smoke ended any life that might have been left in the quartet of scum, then backed out of his hiding place and stretched his cramped muscles, protected by the huge pile of logs.

Smoke carefully checked his Colts, wiping them free of dirt with a bandana. “All right, Lanny!” he called. “You made your brags back in Gibson. Let's end this madness right here and now. Let's see if you've got the guts to face a man. You sure have been real brave telling me what you planned to do with my wife.”

“You know I wouldn't do that to no good woman, Jensen. That was just to make you mad.”

“You succeeded, Lanny.”

“Let's call it off, Smoke. I'll ride away and you won't see me ” no more.

“All right, Lanny. You just do that little thing.”

“You mean it?”

“I'm tired of this killing , Lanny. Mount up and get gone.”

“You'll back-shoot me, Jensen!” There was real fear in the outlaw's voice.

“No, Lanny. I'll leave that to punks like you.”

Lanny cursed him.

“I'm steppin' out, Lanny.” This was to be no fast draw encounter. Smoke knew Lanny was going to try to kill him any way he could. Smoke's hands were full of Colts, the hammers eared back.

At the edge of the piled-up logs, Smoke started running. Lanny fired, missed, and fired again, the bullet burning Smoke's side. He turned and began pulling and cocking, a thunderous roar in the savage blow-down.

Lanny took half a dozen rounds in his upper torso, the force of the striking slugs driving him back against a huge old stump. He tried to lift his guns. He could not. His strength was gone. Smoke walked over to him, reloading as he walked.

“You ain't human,” Lanny coughed up the words. “You a devil.”

“You got any kin you want me to write?”

“You go to hell!”

Smoke turned his back to the man and walked away.

“You ain't gonna leave me to die alone, is you?” Lanny called feebly.

Smoke stopped. With a sigh, he turned around and walked back to the outlaw's side. Lanny looked up as the light in his eyes began to dim. Smoke rolled a cigarette, lit it, and stuck it between Lanny's lips.

“Thanks.”

Smoke waited. The cigarette fell out of Lanny's lips. Smoke picked it up and ground it out under the heel of his boot.

“Least I can go out knowin' it wasn't no two-bit tinhorn who done me in,” were Lanny's last words.

 

 

Smoke returned to the natural corral and saddled up. He wanted no more of this blown-down place of death. And from Dagger's actions, the big horse didn't either. Smoke rode out of the Medicine Bow Range and took the easy way south. He crossed the Laramie River and made camp on the shores of Lake Hattie.

He crossed over into Colorado the next morning and felt he was in home territory, even though he had many, many hard miles yet to go.

He followed the Laramie down into the Medicine Bow Mountains, riding easy, but still with the smell of sudden and violent death seeming to cling to him. He wanted no more of it. As he rode he toyed with the idea of selling out and pulling out.

He rejected that almost as quickly as the thought sprang into his brain.

The Sugar loaf belonged to Smoke and Sally Jensen. Fast gun he might be, but he wasn't going to let his unwanted reputation drive him away. If there were punks and crud in the world who felt they just had to try him ... well, that was their problem. He had never sought the name of Gunfighter; but damned if he was going to back down, either.

The West was changing rapidly. Oh, there would be a few more wild and woolly years, but probably no more than a decade before law and order settled in. Law and order was changing everything and everybody west of the Mississippi. Jesse James was dead, killed in 1882. Clell Miller had been dead for years. Clay Allison had died a very ignoble death back in ‘77. Sam Bass was gone. Curley Bill Brocius had been killed by Wyatt Earp in Tombstone in '82. John Wesley Hardin was in a Texas prison. Rowdy Joe Lowe had met his end in Denver, killed in a gunfight over his wife. Mysterious Dave Mather had vanished about a year back and no one knew where he was.

Smoke doubted Dave would ever resurface. Probably changed his name and was living respectable.

Smoke rode the old trails, alive with the ghosts of mountain men who had come and gone years back, blazing the very trails he now rode. He thought of all the gunfighters and outlaws that were gone.

Charlie Storms was dead—and not too many folks mourned his passing. Charlie had been sitting at the table in Deadwood back in ‘76 when Cross-Eyed Jack McCall walked up behind Wild Bill and blew his brains out. Charlie tried to brace Luke Short in Tombstone back in '81. He rolled twelve.

I've known them all, Smoke mused. The good and the bad and that curious combination of both.

Dallas Stoudenmire finally saw the elephant back in '82.

Ben Thompson had been killed just the year back, Smoke recalled, down in San Antonio. Killed while watching a play.

The list was a long one, and getting longer.

And me? Smoke reflected. How many men have gone down under my guns?

He really didn't know. But he knew the count was awesomely high. He knew that he was rated as the number-one gunfighter in all the West; knew that he had killed a hundred men—or more. Probably more.

He shook those thoughts out of his head. There was no point in dwelling on them, and no point in trying to even think that he could live without his guns. There was no telling how many tin-horn punks and would-be gunslicks would be coming after him after the news of Gibson hit the campfires and the saloons of the West.

He stopped at a small four-store town and bought himself a couple of sacks of tobacco and rolling papers. He cut himself a wedge of cheese and got him a pickle from the barrel and a sackful of crackers. He went outside to sit on the porch of the store to have his late-afternoon snack.

“That there's Smoke Hensen.” The words came to him from inside the store.

“No!”

“Yeah. He's killed a thousand men. Young, ain't he?”

“A thousand men?”

“Yeah. ‘Course, that ain't countin' Indians.”

Small children came to stand by the edge of the store to stare at him through wide eyes. Smoke knew how a freak in a carnival must feel. But he couldn't blame the kids. He'd been written about so much in the penny dreadfuls and other books of the time that the kids didn't know what to think of him.

Or the adults, either, for that matter.

Damn! but he was tired. Tired both physically and mentally.

Once he got back to Sally and the Sugarloaf, he didn't think he'd ever leave her side until she got a broom and ran him off.

He offered a cracker to a shy little girl and she slowly took it.

“Jeanne!” her mother squalled from a house across the dusty street. “You get away from him!”

Jeanne smiled at Smoke, grabbed the cracker and took off.

Smoke looked up at the sounds of horses walking toward him. He sighed heavily. The two-bit punk who called himself Larado and that pair of no-goods, Johnny and Brett, were heading his way.

He slipped the thongs off his hammers and called over his shoulder, “Shopkeep! Get these kids out of here—right now!”

Within half a minute, the street was deserted.

Smoke stood up as the trio dismounted and began walking toward him.

“Back off, boys!” Smoke called. “This doesn't have to be.”

Larado snorted. “What's the matter, Jensen? You done turned yeller on us?”

“Don't be a fool!” Smoke's words were hard. “I'm tryin' to make you see that there is no point to this.”

“The point is, Mister Big-Shot,” Johnny said, and Smoke could smell the whiskey from all them even at this distance, “we gonna kill you.”

Smoke shook his head. “No, you're not, boys. If you drag iron, you're dead. All of you.” He started walking toward them.

Bret's eyes widened in fear. Johnny and Larado wore looks of indecision on their young faces.

“Well!” Smoke snapped, closing the distance. “At this range we're all going to die, you know that don't you boys?”

They knew it, and it literally scared the pee out of Bret.

Smoke slapped Larado with a hard open palm, knocking the young man's hat off and bloodying his mouth. He backhanded Johnny with the same hand and drove his left fist into Bret's stomach.

Reaching out, he tore the gunbelt from Larado and hit the young man in the face with it, breaking his nose and knocking him to the ground.

Smoke tossed the gunbelt and pistols into a watering trough. He looked down at the young men, lying on the ground.

“It's not as easy as the books make it out to be, is it, boys?” Smoke asked them. He expected no reply and got none.

Smoke reached down and jerked guns from leather, tossing them into the same trough.

“You can keep your rifles. Keep them and ride out. Go on back home and learn you a trade. Go to school; make something out of yourselves. But don't ever brace me again. For if you do, I'll kill you without hesitation. I'm giving you a chance. Take it.”

The young men slowly picked themselves up off the ground and mounted up. They rode out without looking back.

“Mighty fine thing you done there, Mister Smoke,” a man said. “Mighty fine. You could have killed them all.”

Smoke looked at the citizen. “I'm tired of killing. I know that I'll have to kill again, but I'm not looking forward to it.”

“The wife is fixin' a pot roast for supper. We'd be proud to have you sit at our table. She's a good cook, my old woman is. And the kids would just be beside themselves if you was to come on over. Don't a home-cooked meal sound good to you?”

A smile slowly creased Smoke's lips. “It sure does.”

 

 

Smoke did not leave the Sugarloaf for a week. He got reacquainted with Sally every time she bumped into him ... and she bumped into him a lot.

He rolled on the floor with the babies and acted a fool with them, making faces at them, letting them ride his back like a horse, and in general, settling back into the routine of being a husband, father, and rancher.

On the morning that he decided to ride into town, Sally's voice stopped him in the door.

“Aren't you forgetting something, Smoke.”

He turned. She was holding his guns in her hands.

He stared at her.

“I know, honey,” she said. “I've known for a long time that you're tired of the killing.”

“It just seems like a man ought to be able to ride into town without strapping on a gun.”

“I don't know whether that day will ever come, honey. As long as you are Smoke Jensen, the last mountain man, there will be people riding to try you. And you know that.” She came to him and pressed against him. “And speaking very selfishly, I kind of like to have you around.”

Smoke smiled and took the gunbelt, hooking it on a peg.

She looked up at him, questions in her eyes.

He whispered in her ear.

She laughed and bumped into him again.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

 

 

 

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Copyright © 1989 by William W Johnstone

 

ISBN: 978-0-7860-1302-9

 

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