Code of the Mountain Man (11 page)

“Lemme drink some coffee, man!” the outlaw said. “Catch my breath. I been ridin' all night to get here.” He drained his cup and tossed the dredges. “A federal judge back East done put out warrants on Smoke Jensen. Murder warrants from that shootin' over to Idaho some years back. Three warrants. The re-ward money totals over thirty thousand dollars to the man who brings him in – dead or alive.”

“Well, now,” Lee said, sitting down on a log. “Ain't that something? What's Jensen doin' about this sicheation?”

“He's on the run. Somewhere betwix here and the border.”

Lee brought the man up to date on the attacks of the previous night.

“Thirty thousand dollars,” outlaw Boots Pierson whispered. “That's a fortune. A man could live real good for a long time with that money.”

“They's more news,” the man who brought the word said, pouring himself more coffee. “The word is out, and bounty hunters from all over is comin' in. If we're gonna do something about Jensen, we damn well better get movin' 'fore all them other hardcases come a-lookin'.”

“That there's a puredee fact,” Tom Post said.

Lee looked at his men, knowing that any plans he might have had were now gone with the wind. All his men were thinking about was that thirty thousand dollars reward and the reputation that went with being the man who brung in Smoke Jensen belly down acrost a saddle.

The camp of crud and no-goods broke up into small groups, all talking at once about what all that reward money could buy them. Women, whiskey, and gambling, for the most part.

“All right, all right!” Lee finally managed to shout the camp silent. “Let's plan. Now for sure we can't go after him in a bunch. He'd see and hear us coming miles away. So let's split up into groups of six. That'd be damn near ten groups workin' the mountains. Y'all talk it over and form up with men you wanna ride with. Then we'll settle down and go over what group is gonna cover what area.”

The men split up into groups of six and seven, each group made up of men who had known each other for a long time, or who knew the other's reputation.

Lee had started out with a small army of crud, over seventy-five men. He was now down to nine groups of six each. Fifty-six men. He thought about that for a minute. Fifty-four men. Whatever!

Lee found him a stump of pencil and sat down, scribbling on a dirty envelope. Four were either in jail or being transported back to states that had warrants on them. Jensen had killed two on the trail coming into town. A half a dozen had left the gang after the raid against Big Rock. That meant that Jensen had killed about ten the previous night... give or take two or three. The man was a devil, for a fact, but he was still only one man. They would find him, and they would kill him.

Lee waved his group over to him. To his mind, he had chosen well the five men who would ride with him. They were all vicious killers. Curt Holt, Ed Malone, Boots Pierson, Harry Jennings, and Blackjack Simpson.

The young punks had banded together, as Lee had figured they would, with the punk kid Pecos their leader. All the other groups were electing leaders. Curly Rogers was bossing one group, Al Martine another. Whit was fronting another group and Ray yet another. The last two were being led by Crocker and Graham.

Personally, Lee didn't give a damn which group got Smoke Jensen, just as long as somebody got him. Not that he didn't think thirty thousand was a lot of money. It was. But there was a lot more than that to be had in these mountains once Jensen was out of the way.

Lee stood up and hitched at his gunbelt. “Let's ride, boys. We got us a legend to kill.”

But legends oftentimes grow out of fact. And Smoke Jensen was not an easy man to kill. There had been many over the long and bloody years who had thought that fact not to be true. Somebody had buried them all.

Smoke rode the big buckskin through the windy and lonely high country, once again a man with a price on his head. But this time, the price came from a corrupt judge. And Smoke would deal with him when this little matter in the mountains was settled. He didn't know just how he would deal with him, but deal with him he damn sure would.

Smoke sat the saddle like a man born to it. His back was straight and his eyes constantly moving, scanning the terrain ahead of him and on both sides.

He stopped to rest on a bluff high above the road that led to the little village, and he was not surprised to see wagon after wagon heading for the town. There were wagons and buggies of all descriptions and men on horseback, all heading for the town. It wasn't gold or silver that drew them there – although that was a part of it. It was the news that Smoke Jensen was a wanted man.

Smoke rested his horses and squatted down, his field glasses in his big hands, and studied the passing parade unfolding far below him.

He grunted as he picked out two of the West's most notorious bounty hunters: Ace Reilly and Big Bob Masters. They were riding together.

There was Lilly LaFevere in her fancy buggy, with several wagon loads of ladies of the evening right behind her. He saw several well known gamblers that he was on speaking terms with.

Then he laughed aloud. There was Louis Longmont, riding a beautiful high-stepping black, with a wagon pulled by four big mules right behind him, driven by his personal valet and cook ... he wondered if it was still Andre? Louis Longmont, a millionaire professional gambler who owned a casino in Monte Carlo, who owned banks and railroads and entire blocks of cities, and who was one of the most feared gunfighters in all the world. In the wagon would be jars of caviar, cases of fine French wines, and plenty of Louis' favorite scotch whiskey, Glenlivet.

Smoke felt a lump knot up in his throat as he scanned the road below. There was Cotton Pickens from up in Puma County, Wyoming. Their paths had crossed a time or two, when Smoke had pulled Cotton out of a couple of bad spots. Now he'd come to help out Smoke.

“Well, I'll just be damned!” Smoke whispered, as he focused his glasses on Johnny North, who had a ranch about twenty miles from Smoke and Sally's Sugarloaf. Johnny had married the Widow Colby and hung up his six-shooters years back. Now he had cleaned them up, oiled the leather, and strapped them on and was coming to help his neighbor.

“My God!” Smoke said, as his eyes touched upon a man with gray shoulder-length hair. “I was told you were dead!”

He was looking at the legendary Charlie Starr.

Smoke chuckled. “Going to get real interesting around the town very soon,” he muttered. “Real interesting.”

Smoke leaned back against a huge boulder and rolled a cigarette, lighting up. If he was right in his thinking, Lee Slater was probably right now splitting up his gang into small groups and starting a concentrated search for their prey ... that being Smoke Jensen. Smoke smiled. He hoped Lee would do that. Small groups were easier to handle.

He smoked his cigarette and carefully extinguished it. He took his field glasses and once more studied the increasing traffic on the road below.

The town was going to boom for a time. The stage line would put on more stages and roll them in and out at least once a day from north and south, and maybe more than that.

“Well, now,” Smoke said, as he picked out Dan Diamond, another bounty hunter. The man riding with him was familiar, but it took Smoke a minute or so to put a name on the face. Nap Jacobs. Nap was a thoroughly bad man. Fast with a gun and seemingly without a nerve or a scruple in his entire body. And he didn't like Smoke at all. And there was Morris Pattin, another bounty hunter who hated Smoke Jensen.

Smoke tightened the cinch on Buck and put the pack back on the pack animal. “Time to go, boys. I'm going to find you both a nice little box canyon, with good graze and water and let you both rest for a time. Then I'm going to lay out some ambushes.”

* * *

“Good to see you again, Earl!“ Louis said, stepping up on the boardwalk and shaking hands with the Englishman.

“By the Lord! It's grand to see you, Louis. It's going to get rather interesting around this little village before very long. Who are your friends?”

“Johnny North, a neighbor of Smoke Jensen's. Cotton Pickens, a rancher from up Wyoming way, and this, Earl, is Charlie Starr.”

“I am awed and humbled, sir,” Earl said, with genuine emotion in his voice. “You rank among the few men who have become a legend in your own time.”

“Thank you, sir,” Charlie replied, shaking hands with the gambler/gunfighter. “I may take it that you are a friend of Smoke Jensen?”

“You may. Let's go into my office, and I'll bring you up to date on Smoke's troubles.”

Larry Tibbson had taken the first stage out of Big Rock, heading down to where Smoke was hiding out. He kept a very low profile and kept his big mouth shut concerning his opinions of Smoke Jensen. He decided that since the town was growing so quickly – he didn't have sense enough to know what was causing the rapid growth, nor that it would very likely bust as quickly as it boomed – he would hang out his shingle in the newly named town of Rio. Everybody needed the services of a good attorney from time to time, and this looked like the ideal spot to make some quick money.

But my word! Larry thought, stepping off the stage, it was so rowdy here. All these rough-looking fellows carrying guns and knives right out in the open. Shocking! He had never seen anything like it. And their boorish behavior was offensive to someone of Larry's gentle sensibilities. All the more reason to stay, he thought. Bring some refinement to the savages.

He managed to get the last room available in the hotel – and he did that by paying five times the usual going rate.

“Them sheets ain't been slept on but three times,” the man told him, in protest over Larry's demand for clean sheets. “The last feller used 'em didn't appear to have no fleas.”

“Change the sheets!”

“All right, all right,” the newly hired room clerk grumbled.

Larry turned to the stairs and was stopped in his tracks at the sight of Louis Longmont dismounting and shaking hands with what appeared to be a constable of some sort. It was hard to tell in this barbaric setting, since lawmen, for the most part, did not wear uniforms denoting their profession, as was the case in more civilized parts of the nation.

Louis Longmont ... here? Larry walked to the window of the saloon and looked out, seeing the six-guns belted around the millionaire's waist. So the rumors were true after all, Larry mused. The man was an adventurer. But was he here to hunt down Smoke Jensen, or to aid the gunfighter?

And who was that long-haired, grizzled-looking older man shaking hands with the constable? Obviously some sort of gunfighter, but it was hard to tell, since all those gathered around the constable wore two guns, tied down. It was so confusing out here.

With a sigh, Larry turned to climb the stairs. He angled over and spoke to the room clerk, whose small station was at the end of the bar.

“Do you have inside facilities?” Larry inquired.

“Huh?”

“Water closets inside.”

“Hell, no!”

Larry shook his head and headed for the room.

“You forgot your bags,” the room clerk called.

“Carry them up for me.”

“Tote your own damn bags, mister!”

Larry climbed the stairs, sweating under the load of his trunk. All in all, he thought, the West just had to be the most barbaric and inhospitable place he had ever traveled.

* * *

“How many men in Slater's bunch?” Johnny asked.

Earl spread his hands. “Fifty to seventy-five are the numbers I keep hearing.”

“Smoke's a tough ol' boy,” Charlie Starr said. “But he's not indestructible. He's gonna need some help with this one. Come the morning I'll provision up and head out for the lonesome. Louis, I think you and Johnny and Cotton ought to stay close to here. This town's a-fixin' to bust wide open and Earl, here, is gonna need some help keepin' order. 'Sides, Smoke needs all the friendly ears he can use right here.”

“I agree,” Louis said. “Sooner or later, Smoke is going to tire of the mountains and come into town, and to hell with the U.S. Marshals. We need to be here to back him up.”

Johnny had left Big Rock before Larry Tibbson started with all his mouth, so all he knew about the Eastern lawyer was that he'd come trying to spark a married woman, Sally, and that was a stupid thing to do. If Smoke had been home, the lawyer would be cold in the ground with the worms playing the dipsy-doodle around his sewed-together lips. Which was about the only way anybody could get a lawyer to shut up.

Someone had set up a portable saw mill and was already backed up with orders for lumber. The sounds of sawing and hammering and nailing and cussing overrode any other sound in the town. With Earl Sutcliffe as the marshal, few dared to fire a pistol, even for fun. And the whole town knew within minutes of their arrival that Cotton Pickens, Johnny North, Charlie Starr, and Louis Longmont were on the side of the law with Earl Sutcliffe. That knowledge smoothed out just a whole bunch of otherwise sharp and explosive tempers. It would take a puredee damn fool to go up against those five.

“Now,” Earl said, “we have to see about rooms for you gentlemen.”

Louis shook his head. “No need. Andre is hiring people now to erect my saloon and gambling hall. We'll have board floors and wooden sides, but a canvas top. I'll have the workmen build an addition to the saloon for us. Until then, we'll sleep out under God's blanket.”

“I'm gonna start puttin' my provisions together,” Charlie said. “I get it done soon enough, I just might take off while there's a few hours of daylight left.”

“Get whatever you need and charge it, Charlie,” Earl told him. “Your money is no good in this town.”

Charlie looked at the man. “I ain't no broke saddle bum, Earl.”

“Of course, you're not,” Louis said with a smile. “If you wish, you can settle up when you return from the mountains.”

“I just might do that. See you boys.” The old gunfighter left the office.

“Whew!” Johnny said. “That, fellers, is one randy ol' puma.”

“I concur,” Louis said. “Have you ever seen him in action, Earl?”

“No, never.”

“Awesome. He's a little slower than he used to be, I would imagine. But still one of the fastest guns around. And he never misses.”

“I would like to get word to Smoke that you are here,” Earl said. “But I haven't the foggiest where he might be.”

Louis shrugged his shoulders. “Knowing Smoke as I do, he probably already knows. Although how he manages to learn those things mystifies me.”

“Indians say that eagles come tell him,” Cotton said.

“I've heard that, too,” Johnny said.

“If he knows you gentlemen are here,” Earl said drily, “it is probably because he squatted on a mountain and watched the road below through field glasses.”

“I like the eagle story better,” Louis said, and the men burst out laughing.

* * *

A bounty hunter they called Slim Williams wasn't laughing. He had left the road miles from the newly named town of Rio and headed into the high country. He'd come upon tracks: a man riding and a pack horse behind.

He found where the man had stopped and dismounted for a drink of water at a rushing mountain stream. A big man, judging by his boot tracks. And Smoke Jensen was a big man.

Then he lost the trail. Slim wandered around for a hour and never could pick it back up. He had sat his horse for a time, smoking a cigarette and thinking things through. His eyes caught movement in the timber, about a hundred yards away. Then the man – and he was sure it was a man – was gone.

“What the hell?” Slim said. He rode his tired horse over to the spot where he'd seen the movement and dismounted. There were tracks, and the print was about the same size as those he'd seen back at that little crick. But this man was wearing moccasins. And it hadn't been no Injun, neither. Slim was sure of that. This man seemed to have some sort of black bandanna tied around his head, and his hair had been cut short.

He walked back to where he'd left his horse reined. The damn horse was gone!

“Shotgun!” Slim called. “Come on, Shotgun. Come to Slim, boy.”

Silence greeted him from the high country timber.

Slim began to worry. He could make it back to the road; he wasn't worried about that. But all his possessions were in the saddlebags or tied in his bedroll.

“Shotgun! Now come on, boy. Come to Ol' Slim, Shotgun.”

Slim spun around, a Colt leaping into his hand as the voice came out of the timber. “Shotgun was tired. He needed a rest.”

“Who the hell are you, mister? You gimmie back my damn horse, you thief!”

“A back-shooting murderer calling me a thief.” The voice laughed. “That's very funny.”

Slim cussed him.

Smoke said, “You looking for Smoke Jensen?”

“That ain't none of your concern, mister.”

“I can lead you to him.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. I get half the reward money, though.”

“You go suck an egg, mister.” Slim thought for a moment. “Tell you what I'll do, mister. You step out so's I can see you, and we'll talk.”