Trail of the Mountain Man (15 page)

There was nothing Smoke could do. Peyton's spread was a good twenty-five miles away from Sugarloaf, his range bordering Tilden's holdings.

It was not long before the fire's glow had softened, and then faded completely out.

“Peyton refused our offer of help,” Buttermilk said. “Some of us offered to stay over thar with him. But he turned us down flat.”

“We'll ride over in the morning,” Smoke said. “At first light. There is nothing we can do this evening.”

“Except wonder what is happening over there,” Ralph stated.

“And how many funerals you gonna have to hold,” Luke added.

 

 

Peyton, his wife June, and their kids had been forced to retreat into the timber when it became obvious they were hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. The family had made it out of the burning, smoking area with the clothes on their backs and nothing else.

They had lain quietly in the deep timber and watched their life's work go up, or down, in fire. They had watched as the hooded men shot all the horses, the pigs, and then set the barn blazing. The corral had been pulled down by ropes, the garden trampled under the hooves of horses. The Peyton family was left with nothing. Nothing at all.

They could not even tell what spread the men had come from, for the horses had all worn different or altered brands.

The family lay in the timber long after the night-riders had gone. They were not hurt, not physically, but something just as important had been damaged: their spirit.

“I tried to be friends with Tilden,” Peyton said. “I went over to his place and spoke with him. He seemed to be reasonable enough, thanked me for coming over. Now this.”

“They turned the wagon over,” June said, her eyes peering into the darkness. “Broke off one wheel. But that can be fixed. There's lots of land to be had just north of here. I won't live like this,” she warned. “I will not. And I mean that.”

“I got a little money. I can buy some horses. We'll see what we can salvage in the morning.”

“Nothing,” June said bitterly. “Nothing at all.”

 

 

“And you don't have any idea who they were?” Smoke asked Peyton.

Dawn had broken free of the mountains only an hour before. Smoke and some of his old gunhawks had left the Sugarloaf hours before first light, stopping along the way at the other small spreads.

“No,” Peyton said, a note of surrender in his voice.

The Apache Kid returned from his tracking. “Headin' for the TF spread,” he said. “Just as straight as an arrow that's where they're headin'.”

“So?” June demanded, her hands on her hips. “So what? Prove that them riders come from the TF. And then even if you do that, see what the law will do about it.”

“Now, June,” Peyton said.

The woman turned around and walked off, her dress dirty and soot-covered.

“What are you gonna do?” Smoke asked Peyton.

“Pull out. What else is there to do?”

“We'll help you rebuild, just like we're doing with Wilbur Mason.”

“And then what?” Peyton demanded. “What happens after that? I'll tell you,” he blurted out. “The same thing all over again. No. I'll find me some horses, fix that busted wheel, and take off. This land ain't worth dyin' over, Smoke. It just ain't.”

“That's not what you told me a few weeks back.”

“I changed my mind,” the man replied sullenly. “I don't feel like jawin' about it no more. My mind is made up. We're taking what we can salvage and pullin' out. Headin' up north of here. See you men.” He turned and walked off, catching up with his wife.

“Let him go,” Charlie said to Smoke. “He's not goin' to last anywhere out here. First time a drought hits him, he'll pack up and pull out. The locust come, he'll head out agin, always lookin' for an easy life. But he'll never find it. You know yourself it takes a hard man to make it out here. Peyton's weak, so's his woman. And them kids are whiners. He'll leave the land pretty soon, I'm figurin'. He'll get him a job in some little store, sellin' shoes and ribbons, and pretty soon he'll find something wrong with
that
job. But it ain't never gonna be his fault. It'll always be the fault of someone else. Forget him, Smoke. He ain't got no good sand bottom to him.”

Smoke hated to say it, but he felt Charlie was right in his assessment of Peyton. Tilden had burned Wilbur Mason out; that had just made Wilbur and his family all the more determined to stay and fight.

“Good luck, Peyton!” Smoke called.

The man did not even turn around. Just waved his hand and kept on walking.

Somehow that gesture, or lack of it, made Smoke mad as hell. He wondered if he'd ever see Peyton or his family again. He thought, if he didn't, he wouldn't lose any sleep over the loss.

 

 

The few other small rancher-farmers in the high country met that afternoon on a plateau just about halfway between Smoke's Sugarloaf and the beginning of the TF range. And it was, for the most part, a quiet, subdued gathering of men.

Mike Garrett and his two hands; Wilbur Mason and Bob Colby; Ray Johnson and his hired hand; Nolan Edwards and his two oldest boys; Steve Matlock, Smoke and his gunhands.

And Reverend Ralph Morrow, wearing a pair of jeans and checkered shirt.

“Ralph is gonna buy some land from me,” Smoke explained. “Farm some and ranch a little. Preach part time. The minister come up with a pretty good idea, I'm thinking. But we'll get to his idea in a minute. Anybody got any objections to Ralph joinin' our group?”

“I ain't got no objections,” Ray said. “I'm just wonderin' if, him bein' a preacher and all, will he fight?”

Ralph stepped forward. “Some of you might know me. For five years, I went by another name. I fought under the name of the Cincinnati Kid.”

Matlock snapped his fingers. “I read about you in the Gazette. You kilt a man .. ah ...”

He trailed off into an uncomfortable silence.

“Yes,” Ralph said. “I killed a man with my fists. I didn't mean to, but I did. As to whether I'll fight. Yes. For my family, my land, my friends. I'll fight.”

And everyone there believed him. Still, one had to say, “But, Reverend Morrow, you're a minister; you can't go around shootin' folks!”

Ralph smiled ... rather grimly. “Smoke and Charlie and some of the boys are going to help me build my cabin, first thing in the morning. You let some sucker come around and start trouble, you'll see how fast I'll shoot him.”

The laughter helped to relieve the tension.

And Reverend Ralph Morrow suddenly became just “one of the boys.”

“How about that other idea, Smoke?” Wilbur asked.

Smoke walked to the edge of the flats. He pointed down at the road. “That road, right there, connects Danner and Signal Hill. Seven, eight miles further down, you got to cut south to get to Fontana. Right?”

All agreed that was true. So?

“Pearlie is ridin' hard to the county seat right now. The Reverend and his wife, Bountiful, come up with this idea at noonin'. Right here, boys, right here on this plateau, but back yonder a ways, there's gonna be a town. We don't need Fontana. The land the town will be built on is gonna be filed on by Pearlie; he's carrying the money to buy some of it outright. When that surveyor was through here last year, he left a bunch of his markings and such at the house. Never did come back for them. Sally remembered ‘em this morning. Everything is gonna be legal and right. My wife is puttin' up the money to build a large general store. I figure that once I explain it all to Louis Longmont, he'll see the humor in it and drop some of his money in. I'm hopin' he will. Pretty sure. Pearlie is carryin' a letter to the bank at the county seat; me and my wife have some money there.” He grinned. “She has a heap more than I do. Wilbur Mason and his wife is gonna run the store for us. Wilbur owned a store back east of here at one time. So they both know what to do.

“Day after tomorrow, there's gonna be wagons rolling in here. Lumber, and a lot of it. We're gonna have several buildings here, including a sheriffs office and a jail.”

Everybody was grinning now. Some of the men were laughing outright.

“We're gonna have a saloon, ‘cause you all know that a saloon is just as much a meetin' place as it is a place to drink. We're gonna have us a cafe, with home-cookin'. The women will see to that. It'll bring in some money — and I know you all could use that. A church too, where we can all go to services come Sunday morning. And ... a school. Both Sally and Bountiful are schoolmarms. And I'm gonna tell y'all something: once the wives of Beaconfield and Jackson hear about this town, with a church and proper schoolhouse, don't you think they won't be putting the pressure on their husbands to lean toward us.”

“Who's gonna be the sheriff?” Matlock asked.

“Charlie Starr,” Smoke said with a grin. “He's still got an old badge he wore some years back down close to Durango. I think he'd make a damned good one. Any objections?”

None.

“Now we want this to be kept secret as long as possible. Soon as the wagons start rolling in, though, the cat's gonna be out of the bag. But by that time, there won't be a damned thing Tilden Franklin can do about it except cuss. Now here is something else. There ain't no post office in Fontana. Never has been. We've always had to ride over to either Danner or Signal Hill to the post office. We can post a letter on the stage that comes through Fontana, but that don't always mean it'll get where it's goin'. Sally wrote a letter this morning to the proper people up in Denver and also to her folks who have a lot of high-up connections back East. So I think we'll get us a post office.

“Now the name. That come pretty easy too. Last evenin', as Ralph and Bountiful was ridin' along, talkin', they come to this point, right down there.” He pointed. “And she said, ‘Oh, look at that beautiful big rock'.”

Smoke grinned. “Big Rock. Big Rock, Colorado!”

“The son of a bitch is doing
what?”
Tilden Franklin screamed the question at Clint.

“Buildin' a town,” Clint said woefully. “Big Rock, Colorado.”

Tilden sat down. “Well, he can't do that,” he said with something very close to a pout. “I done built a town. A proper one.”

“Maybe he can't, Boss. But somebody forgot to tell him that. Him and that goddamned preacher and their wives. And lemme tell you something about that preacher man. He's done up and bought some land from Smoke Jensen and his cabin is damn near complete. And maybe you oughta know this too: that preacher is more than just a preacher. He fought for some years under the name of the Cincinnati Kid.”

Tilden stared at his foreman as if the man had lost his mind. Then he slowly nodded his head. “I read about him. He killed a man with his fists right before he was scheduled to fight ... somebody big-named. Iron Mike or something like that. What's the point of all this, Clint? What does Jensen hope to prove by it?”

Clint sat down, rather wearily, and plopped his hat down on the floor beside the chair. “Damned if I know, Boss. I figured with his reputation, when we burned Mason out, he'd come shootin'. He didn't. I figured when we ... they done it to Velvet and killed Adam, Smoke would come a-shootin'. He didn't. Luis and his bunch burned out Peyton. And Smoke builds him a town. I can't figure it.”

“I won't even ask if the town is legal.”

“It's legal, and that Lawyer Hunt Brook and his wife done moved his practice out of Fontana and up to Big Rock. I spied on them some this morning. Then I nosed around Big Rock myself. That's a mighty fine store that's goin' up. And the smells from that cafe got my mouth waterin'. Some of the nesters' wives and older girls is doin' the cookin'. And them miners is swarmin' all over the place. They got 'em a saloon too. Big Rock Saloon. No games, no girls. A nice church and school combination goin' up too. And a jail.”

“And I guess they elected themselves a sheriff, did they?”

“Shore did. Charlie Starr is the sheriff, and Luke Nations is his deputy.”

Tilden pounded his fists on the desk and cursed. He looked and behaved like a very large, spoiled, and petulant child.

Clint waited patiently. He had seen his boss act like this before.

When Tilden had calmed down, Clint said, “Herds look good.”

Tilden fixed him with a baleful look. “That's wonderful, Clint. I can't tell you how impressed I am. I'm making thousands of dollars a week on gold shares. I should be making several more thousands in kickbacks, except that goddamned sheriff I put into office has turned holy-roller on me. I am paying several thousands of dollars a month for some of the finest gunhands in the West, and they can't seem to rid the country of one Smoke Jensen. The son of a bitch rides all over the country, usually by himself, and my so-called gunslicks can't or won't, tackle him.”

Clint sat quietly, knowing his boss was not yet through.

“Now Johnny North has taken up with a damned nester woman. Judge Proctor hasn't had a drink in weeks; he's turned just as righteous as Monte Carson. My men are afraid,
afraid,
to go into
my goddamn town!”

Tilden rose from behind his desk to pace the study. He turned to face Clint's back.

“Turn around and look at me!” he ordered. “Tell Luis to take his men into town and rid it of Monte and Proctor. Right now, Clint. Right now!”

Clint retrieved his hat and stood up. “Boss,” he said patiently. “Are you talkin' about treein' a town?”

“Exactly.”

Clint sighed and shook his head. He wished Tilden would get Smoke Jensen out of his mind and just get on with the business of ranching. The big foreman wished a lot of things, but he knew that Smoke Jensen had become an obsession with Tilden. He wasn't even talkin' much about Sally no more. His hatred of Smoke had nearly consumed the man.

And Clint felt — no,
knew
— somehow that Tilden wasn't goin' to win this fight. Oh, he would succeed in runnin' out the nesters who were weak to begin with. Like Peyton. But Peyton was long gone. And them that remained was the tough ones. Not cold-eyed tough like Luis Chamba and Kane and Sanderson and Valentine and Suggs and them other gunslicks Tilden had on the payroll, but tough like with stayin' power.

And now Tilden wanted to tree a Western town. He lifted his eyes, meeting the just-slightly-mad eyes of Tilden Franklin.

“Are you not capable of giving those orders, Clint?”

“Don't push on me, Boss,” Clint warned. “Don't do it.”

Tilden face softened a bit. “Clint ... we've been together for years. We've spent more than a third of our lifetimes together. We've had rough times before. You own ten percent of this ranch. You could have taken your profits and left years ago, started your own spread, but you stayed with me. Just stay with me a while longer, you'll see. Things will be like they were years ago.”

“Boss, things ain't
never
gonna be like they was. Not ever agin.”

Tilden picked up a vase and hurled it against a far wall, breaking the vase, showering the carpet with bits of broken ceramic. “It will!” he screamed. “You'll see, Clint. Just get rid of Smoke Jensen and those nesters will fold up and slink away. Now get out, Clint. Carry out my orders.
Get out,
damn you!”

Crazy! Clint thought. He ain't just obsessed ... he's plumb crazy.
He's
the one who's livin' in a house of cards. Not them nesters, but Tilden Franklin.

“All right, Boss,” Clint said. There was a different note in his voice, a note that Tilden should have picked up on. But he didn't. “Fine. I'll get out.”

Clint left the big house and stood for a moment on the front porch. His eyes swept the immediate holdings of Tilden Franklin. Thousands and thousands of acres. Too goddamn much for one man, and that silly bastard isn't content with it. He wants more.

But not with my help.

Clint walked to his own quarters and began packing. He would take only what he had to have to travel light. One pack horse. Clint had money. Being a very frugal man, he had banked most of his salary and the profits from selling the cows over the years.

He smiled, not a pleasant smile. Tilden didn't know that he owned land up on the Gunnison, up near Blue Mesa. Owned it under the name of Matthew Harrison. Everybody around here knew him as Clint Harris. He'd changed his name as a snot-nosed boy, when he'd run off from his home down in Texas, after he'd shot his abusive stepfather. Clint never knew whether he'd killed the man, or not. He'd just taken off.

And that was what he was going to do now. Just take off.

The foreman — no! he corrected that — ex-foreman ... had not had a good night's sleep since that ... awfulness with Velvet Colby. He sat down at his rough-hewn desk and slowly wrote out instructions on a piece of paper. Finished with the letter, he walked to the door and opened it, calling for a puncher to get over there.

“Billy, can you read and write?”

“Yes, sir, Mister Clint,” the cowboy said. “I finished sixth grade.”

“Fine. Come on in.” With the cowboy inside Clint's quarters, Clint pointed to the letter. “Sign your name where it says Witness.”

“Yes, sir, Mister Clint.” The cowboy did not read the letter; that wasn't none of his business. He signed his name. “You want me to date this, Mister Clint?”

“Yes. Good thought, Billy.”

After Billy had gone, Clint looked around his spartan living quarters. Looked around for one last time. He could see nothing left that he wished to take. Outside, he rigged the pack horse and swung onto his own horse. Looking around, he spotted several punchers just down from the high country. They walked over to him.

“Where you goin', Mister Clint?” a puncher called Rosie asked.

“Haulin' my ashes, Rosie. And if you got any sense about you, you will too.” He looked at the others. “All of you.”

“You got a new job, Mister Clint?” a cowboy named Austin asked.

“Yeah, I do, Austin. And I'm hirin' punchers. I'm payin' forty a month and found. You interested?”

They all were.

Clint figured he could run his place with four hands, including himself. At least for a time.

“Pack your warbags, boys. And do it quiet-like. Meet me just north of Big Rock, south of Slumgullion Pass.”

He swung his horse's head and moved out.

The punchers moved quietly to the bunkhouse and packed their meager possessions. One by one, they moved out, about thirty minutes behind Clint. None of them knew why the foreman was pullin' out. But with Clint gone, damned if they was gonna stay around with all these lazy-assed, overpaid gunhands.

As they rode over and out of TF range, they met other TF punchers — not hired guns, cowboys. The punchers looked at those leaving, put it all together, and one by one, silently at first, made their plans to pull out.

“I ain't seen my momma in nigh on three years,” one said. “I reckon it's time to head south.”

“I got me a pard works over on the Saguache,” another said. “Ain't seen him in two, three years. It's time to move on anyway.”

“I know me a widder woman who owns a right-nice little farm up near Georgetown,” yet another cowboy said. “I'm tared of lookin' at the ass end of cows. I think I'll just head up thataway.”

“I ain't never seed the ocean,” another cowboy lamented. “I think I'll head west.”

 

 

Clint rode into Big Rock and tied his horses at the post outside the Big Rock Saloon. As he was stepping up onto the still-raw-smelling boardwalk, he saw Johnny North and that Belle Colby woman coming out of the general store. They stopped to chat with Lawyer Hunt Brook.

Clint removed his gunbelt and walked slowly over to them. Johnny saw the man coming at him and instinctively slipped the thongs off the hammers of his Colts. Then he noticed that Clint was not armed. His eyes found the packhorse.

“What the hell ...” he muttered.

Clint had some papers in his right hand.

Clint stopped about twenty-five feet from the trio. “I'm friendly,” he said.

“Come on,” Johnny said.

Clint held the papers out to Belle. Slowly, she took them. Clint said, “It won't make up for what was done to your daughter and your husband, but it's something I'd like to do.” He turned and walked back to his horses.

Belle, Johnny, and Hunt watched him swing into the saddle and ride out of their lives.

“Let me see those papers, Belle,” Hunt said. The lawyer quickly scanned first one paper, then the others — older, slightly yellowing around the edges. He began to smile.

“What is it, Mister Brook?” Belle asked.

“Why, Belle ... you own ten percent of the TF Ranch. I think you have just become a very wealthy woman.”

 

 

Tilden called for his houseboy.

“Yes, sir?”

“Get Clint for me, boy.”

“Yes, sir.”

The houseboy returned a few minutes later. “Sir? Mister Clint is gone.”

“Gone ... where, damnit?”

“He packed up and rode out. His quarters is empty, and so is the bunkhouse. Old Ramon at the stable says all the punchers packed up and left. Following Mister Clint.”

“Get out!” Tilden said, real menace in his voice.

“Yes, sir,” the houseboy said. “I most certainly will do that, Mister Tilden.”

Thirty minutes later, the servant had packed his kit and was walking toward Fontana.

In his study, Tilden called for his houseboy. “Bring me a cup of coffee, boy!”

The big house creaked in empty silence.

“Boy!” Tilden roared. “You bring me a cup of coffee or I'll take a whip to your lazy greaser ass!”

Silence. And Tilden Franklin, the man who would be king, knew he was alone in his large, fine home.

He walked to a large window and looked out. His thoughts were savage. “I'm gonna kill you, Jensen. I'm gonna bring Fontana to its knees first. Then I'm gonna burn your goddamn Big Rock to the ground. Then I'm gonna kill you and have your woman.”

He walked to a rack and took down his gunbelt, buckling it around his hips. He put his hat on his head and walked outside.

“Ramon?” he yelled.

“Si, señor?”
the old man called.

“Bring me my horse. Then you find your mule and get Luis for me.”

“Si, señor.”
Son of a bitch! he silently added.