Blood of the Mountain Man (17 page)

“See that my horse is saddled. I am going to town and handle my own affairs.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Smoke tried to hide a grin but failed miserably. He wanted to tell his niece that it would be extremely dangerous for her to ride into town. But the girl had Jensen blood flowing in her veins, and to the best of his knowledge, no Jensens on his side of the family had ever shirked their duty, at least, as they saw it. Even his sister Janey, no-’count as she might have been, had done her best to raise a good girl and see to her future. That counted for something.

Van Horn led a dainty-stepping paint pony up to the house. The mare was not a big horse, but it had a heart as big as any horse on the spread and it loved its master. Jenny had fallen in love with the paint at first sight and had gentled it herself.

Jenny went outside and booted her rifle and swung into the saddle. Sally looked at Smoke and together they laughed softly.

“She’s a Jensen, all right,” Sally said. “Well, I shall have a roast prepared for this evening’s meal.”

“With plenty of carrots and potatoes and a big bowl of thick gravy?” Smoke asked hopefully.

“Why, of course.” She thumped his big chest with a small fist. “And if you’re late, and supper gets cold, you will, Smoke Jensen, answer to me!”

“Yes, ma'am!” Smoke said.

Wolf and Bad Dog rode the wagons, Jenny rode beside Smoke at the head of the procession, and Barrie rode rear guard. The town-tamer had grown thinner in the few weeks since he’d signed on, and Smoke suspected the man was seriously ill and wanting to go out in a blaze of glory. Even though Barrie had not let up on his working around the ranch, Smoke had noticed he always kept a bottle of pain-killing laudanum handy.

“I’m going to ride back with Barrie for a time, Jenny,” Smoke told his niece. ‘You lead this parade, okay?”

"Yes, sir.”

Barrie looked at him as he swung back and fell in beside him on the bumpy road. “How far along is your cancer, Barrie?” Smoke asked.

Barrie grunted. “Haw’d you know?”

“Just a guess.”

“Doc down in Butte said I might last out the summer. But that the end would be no way for a man to go. I don’t intend to go out screamin’ in pain.”

“Not much I can say, is there?”

“Not a thing, Smoke. I’m just proud to have had the chance to ride with you and to help out that young lady up yonder. My own daughter would have been about three years older than her.”

“Would have been?”

“Outlaws killed her when she was just a baby. And after they had their way with my wife, they killed her, too.”

“I do know the feeling.”

“Yeah. I know the story. Summer of ’72, wasn’t it?”

Smoke nodded, the memories rushing back. “Something like that tears a man wide open,” Barrie said. “It leaves a terrible invisible wound that don’t never really heal. You got the ones who done it to your wife and baby. I got the ones who did it to mine. And now, you and me got the same opinion of outlaws.”

“For a fact, we do. Does Van Horn know?”

“Oh, yeah. Me and that old pistolero go way back. He learned me about guns. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell no one else.”

“I won’t.”

“You know where that ol’ lightnin’-blazed tree is up on the east slope, above that little spring?” “Yes.”

“Plant me there. I want to listen to the winds blow and the wolves howl. I always liked wolves. Never had no quarrel with them. I like to think they’ll come down an’ visit me from time to time. Jenny will come see me now and then, too. I know she will; she’s a good girl. Makes a man feel good to know his final restin’ place will have visitors ever’ now and then.”

“You sound like you’re telling me good-bye, Barrie.”

“Pain’s gettin’ worser. I can near ’bouts control it with laudanum, but I don’t know for how much longer. I may not get another chance to say my farewells.”

“I’d ride the river with you anytime, Barrie,” Smoke said simply.

“That’s mighty high praise, comin’ from you, Smoke. Now you go back up yonder and ride beside that little niece of yours.” He smiled. “She’s got spunk, that one. She’ll do. Van Horn thinks the world and all of her. So do I.”

Smoke rode ahead to join Jenny. She looked at him. “Everything all right, Uncle Smoke?”

“It will be, baby. It will be.”

Smoke knew they were in trouble the instant they rode into town. The boardwalk in front of every saloon, and gambling house was lined with strangers, each wearing one or two tied-down guns. Smoke knew some of them. Cosgrove, Biggers, and Fos-burn had sent for the best they could find within a week’s ride of the town. He spotted the man called Keno. Standing beside him was the Texas outlaw, Burt Nevins. Sitting down was Amos Mann, from over Nebraska way. Directly across the street were the King twins, Vern and Eddie. They smiled at Jenny and tipped their hats.

“Goddamn worthless trash!” Both Smoke and Jenny heard Wolf mutter hotly. “I hope they has the audacity to speak direct to that girl. I’ll gut both of them.”

Jenny grinned and looked back at him.

“Don’t pay no nevermind to that pair of white trash, girl,” Wolf said.

“Old man,” Vern called, his face red from the remark. “You’d best watch your mouth before I take a notion to jerk you off that wagon and stomp your guts out.”

Wolf whoaed the wagon and hopped down, leaving the wagon in the middle of the street. He walked over to the boardwalk, stepped up on it, and knocked the gunhand smooth off the boards and onto the ground. Turning, he smashed one huge, gnarled old fist into the gut of Eddie, doubling the man over and putting him gagging and puking on the boards. Vern crawled to his knees and tried to reach for a gun. With no more emotion than he’d feel stomping on a scorpion, Wolf kicked the man in the face, then reached down, pulled their guns from leather, and tossed them into a watering trough. Then, without looking back, he climbed back to the wagon seat and clucked the team.

Chuckling, Smoke lifted the reins and moved out. Jenny looked back and winked at Wolf.

The old mountain man blushed.

“Don’t you be actin’ brazen, now, girl,” he called to her. “It ain’t comely.”

While others of their ilk were trying to get the King twins up on their wobbly feet, Smoke and the small procession were entering the next block on the twisty street. Smoke’s eyes narrowed as he spotted Rod Ivey standing beside Lonesome Ted Light-foot. On the other side of Lightfoot stood Sam Jackson, one of the most worthless men ever to pull on a pair of boots. Standing behind him was the Missouri Ridge-Runner, Clayton Charles.

“They’re sure scrapin’ the bottom of the barrel with this crowd, ain’t they?” Wolf called.

“For a fact,” Smoke called over his shoulder. “Back-shooters, the whole bunch of them.”

“All these men gathered against us,” Jenny said, her voice small. “I don’t understand it.”

Barrie had ridden up even with Bad Dog. “I have never seen so much human garbage in one place. Look there,” he said, cutting his eyes. ‘Jesse Griffin and Kell Duffin. Those two are the scum of the earth.”

Bad Dog nodded his head. “I saw Louie Devine and Ossie Burks, too. One thing bothers me, Barrie. If the men fighting this one very nice little girl have so much money they can afford to hire all this scum, why do they want one small spread?”

“Power, my friend,” the dying town-tamer said.

“The white side of me understands that” the breed said. “The Indian side of me does not understand the yearning for more than a person needs to live comfortably.”

“It’s a mystery, for sure.”

The wagons were pulled in behind the large general store. Smoke told Jenny, with a firmness to his words that the girl knew better to cross, to stay inside the store. He smiled at her to soften his words. “You pick out something pretty for Sally. Some cloth, maybe. Something. It’s going to take a good hour to choose and load these supplies. Barrie will stay with you. I’ll be about.”

“Are you going to start something, Uncle Smoke?” the girl whispered.

“I might as well begin cutting the odds some,

Jenny. Just remember this: all those men out there came here to kill you and me, and to help some very ruthless men to take something that doesn’t belong to them. This is pure black and white, Jenny. There is no gray.”

Smoke checked both guns and loaded up full. He walked behind the counter and took down a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun, broke it open, and loaded it up. He put a handful of shells in his jacket pocket. “Put this on my bill,” he told the very nervous shopkeeper.” He looked at Barrie. “Stay with Jenny. For sure they’ll try to kill her this day.”

“They got to go through me to do it,” the town-tamer said. “And that ain’t no easy task.”

Smoke looked at the shopkeeper. “How do you stand in all this?”

“Neutral!”

“That figures.” Smoke stepped out of the store and onto the boardwalk. He looked at Bad Dog, standing a few yards away. The man had found a chicken feather on the street and had stuck it in his hair. The halfbreed Cheyenne had a strange sense of humor.

“Count plenty coup today,” Bad Dog spoke in broken English, a smile playing on his lip. “Take heap scalps.” Then he laughed out loud.

“I happen to know that you graduated the eighth grade and had offers to go to college” Smoke said drily.

“Don’t spread it around,” Bad Dog said. “It would destroy the image I’ve worked so hard to cultivate.” “Right, Clarence.”

Bad Dog groaned. “Especially don’t let that get out. How did you discover my real name?”

The faint sounds of a trumpet reached the center of town. Within seconds, the booming of a bass drum came to them.

“Here come them damn Bible shouters,” Wolf said, walking up. “Man over yonder at the assayer’s office told me they was gonna hold a parade and a meetin’ today.”

The sounds of “Onward Christian Soldiers” rolled up the street.

“Wonder where the sheriff and his deputies are,” Smoke said.

“They was all called out of town for some reason or the other.”

“How nice for them.”

The tooting and the drumming and the singing grew louder.

“Hey, old man!” Vern King shouted, walking up the boardwalk, his brother beside him. “This is your day to die, you son-of-a-bitch!”

The old mountain man didn’t bat an eye or change expression. He just one-handedly lifted and leveled his Winchester model ’73, .44-.40, thumbed the hammer back, and let it bang. The big slug caught the twin in the belly and doubled him over, dropping him screaming to the boards. His brother jumped for cover and the fight was on.

Vern rolled off the boards to land in the dirt, both hands holding his punctured belly.

Smoke saw a two-bit would-be tough who rode for Fat jerk both ,45s from leather. He leveled the shotgun and gave the punk both barrels from across the narrow street. The charge lifted the thug off his boots and sent him crashing through a store window.

“Behind you, Uncle Smoke!” Jenny screamed from the store.

Smoke turned to see a wild-eyed man with a knife in his hand coming up fast. He reversed the heavy shotgun and smashed the man’s skull with the stock, splintering the wood and rendering the express gun useless. Smoke pulled iron and went to work.

Two of Cosgrove’s toughs jumped onto the loading dock of the general store, rifles in their hands. They made it as far as the back door before running into Barrie. The town-tamer gave them .45-caliber frontier justice, the slugs knocking them back and sending them tumbling off the dock and onto the ground. Barrie twirled his .45s and waited.

Jenny lined up a rifleman on the roof of a store across the street and plugged him through the brisket with her short-barreled carbine. The sniper fell over the side, crashing through the awning and bouncing off the boardwalk.

Bad Dog took out two in just about as many seconds. His guns left the pair motionless in the street, both shot through the heart.

The temperance parade was briefly halted as the paraders jumped for cover, but the shouting and singing was only momentarily silenced. “Sing, brothers and sisters!” Violet shrieked from her station behind a horse trough. “Play, musicians!” she hollered.

The tooting and the drumming began. The choir was only a tad ragged.

Paul Hunt found Smoke Jensen and lined him up in his sights. Before he could pull the trigger he saw fire and smoke erupt from the muzzle of Smoke’s .44. A heavy blow struck him in the belly and he sat down hard, his .45 slipping from numb fingers. His last living thought was that this couldn’t be happening to him. It just couldn’t.

But it did.

Paul Hunt fell over in the dirt and closed his eyes for the last time.

“Help me, Eddie!” Vern hollered.

Eddie ran out to help his brother and jumped very quickly back behind cover as lead howled all around him. Wolf Parcell shoved cartridges into his .44-.40 and waited, crouched behind a barrel.

Pony Harris galloped his horse up the street, the reins in his teeth and both hands on pistols. Smoke shot him off his Triangle JB mount and the gun-for-hire rolled in the street. He rolled up onto the boardwalk and crashed through a window. He died in front of the receiving counter of Chung Lee’s laundry, with Mister Lee shrieking Chinese curses at him.

Several Fosburn men charged the rear of the general store and were cut down by withering rifle and pistol fire from Jenny and Barrie. The young girl and the sick town-tamer stood side by side and stacked up the bodies. The shopkeeper and his wife had hit the floor behind the counter and stayed there.

Fat Fosburn, Jack Biggers, and Major Cosgrove lay on the floor of the mayor’s office and wondered how the battle was going. Outnumbered fifty-to-one, surely Smoke and his crew and that damn snip of a girl would be dead before long.

The general store was across the street and just kitty-cornered from the mayor’s office. Jenny had a wicked look in her eyes as she left Barrie to guard the rear and punched rounds into her carbine as she walked to the front of the store. She took down several rifles from the rack, loaded them all up, and stacked them beside her. Then she started methodically putting .44-caliber holes in the mayor’s office.

“Jesus Christ!” Biggers hollered, as the lead began howling and shrieking all around them. A round struck the stove, whined off, and just missed Fos-burn’s head. Fosburn started hollering in fright. Major Cosgrove lay on his still-bruised belly and cursed the unknown rifleman.