Code of the Mountain Man (2 page)

That made the barkeep real nervous. He moved farther away from the tall, well-built man with the cold eyes and the big hands with flat knuckles. Fighter's hands.

“What's that?” one of the men at the table said.

“You heard me, punk. I said you stink.”

The man pushed back his chair and walked toward the bar, the big California spurs jangling. “You're pushin', mister. You ain't got no call to say somethin' like that.”

“I've been around skunks that smell better than you three,” Smoke told him. He lifted the shot glass with his left hand and took a small sip. It was good whiskey.

One of the men at the table laughed. “Take him, Bob.”

Smoke chuckled, but the sound was void of humor. “Yeah, Bob. Why don't you take me?”

Bob looked back at his buddies. This wasn't going like it usually did. He'd been a bully all his life, and folks usually backed up and took water when he prodded them. This tall man just laughed at him. Funny kind of laugh. Guy looked familiar, too. He'd seen that face somewheres before.

The tall man turned to face Bob. Dirty, unshaven, and smelly. Smoke grimaced at the body odor. “It wouldn't be right for you to meet your Maker smelling like an over-used outhouse. Why don't you boys find a horse trough and take a bath?”

“Huh! What are you talkin' about, mister. I ain't a-goin' to meet my Maker.”

“Oh, yes, you are.” Smoke set the shot glass on the bar. “All three of you.”

“You seem right sure of that,” one of the men seated at the table said.

“I'm positive of it.”

The men at the table smiled. “Three of us and one of you. You're either drunk or crazy.”

“I'm neither. But I'll tell you boys that you made a bad mistake getting tied up with Lee Slater and that pack of rabid hyenas that run with him. You made the next to the worst mistake of your lives when you attacked Big Rock the other day and shot those women and kids.”

The third man cleared his throat and asked, “You the law, mister?”

“I don't need the law to take care of scummy punks like you three.”

The man flushed deeply. But he kept his mouth shut. There was something about this tall man that worried at him. He and most of Slater's men were west coast outlaws, working from the Canadian border down to Mexico. He didn't know a whole lot about Colorado and the men who lived there. This tall man with muscles bunching his shirt was just too damn confident. Too calm. He was cleanshaven and smelling like bath soap. Neatly dressed and his hair trimmed. But he was no dandy. The outlaw could sense that. Those guns of his'n had seen a lot of use.

“We ain't with Lee Slater now,” the second man said.

“You were.”

“You said ‘next' to the worst mistake,” the punk standing in front of him said. “So that means we made a worser one.”

“You certainly did.”

The three waited. The tall man stood by the bar, half turned, smiling coldly at them. The barkeep was poised, ready to hit the floor.

“Well, damnit!” the second man threw a greasy deck of cards to the table. “Are you going to tell us, or not?”

“One of the women you shot was my wife,” Smoke said.

The third man sighed.

“And who might you be, mister?” the punk facing Smoke asked, a nasty grin on his face.

“Smoke Jensen.” Smoke followed that with a hard left fist that smashed into the punk's face. It sounded like someone swinging a nine-pound sledge against a side of freshly butchered beef. The punk's nose exploded in a gush of blood, and the blow knocked him to the floor.

Smoke straightened up with his right hand full of. 44 just as the pair at the table jumped to their feet, dragging iron. He shot the two, cocking and firing so fast the twin shots sounded like one report. One was hit in the center of the chest, dead before he hit the sawdusted floor. The second was struck in the throat, the .44 slug making a terrible mess.

The punk he'd punched on the beak was moaning and crawling to his knees when Smoke jerked him up and threw him against a wall, next to the batwings. The punk screamed as ribs popped from the impact. His eyes were filled with fear as they watched the big man walk toward him, those brown eyes filled with revenge.

The punk staggered out the batwings and fell off the boardwalk, landing in the street. “Help!” he squalled. “Somebody come help me!”

The dark street remained as quiet as the grave he would soon be in.

Smoke had holstered his 44. He stood on the boardwalk and stared at the gunslick. “You think you're bad, boy.” The words were chipped ice flying from his mouth. “Then draw, you sorry piece of crap!”

“You ain't no badge-toter!” the punk slobbered the words. “I got a right to a trial and all that. You can't take the law into your own hands.”

Smoke stared at him, his eyes burning with a glow that the young man on the street had never seen coming from any man. It was eerie and unnatural. A dark stain appeared on the front of the young man's dirty jeans.

“You gonna let me git up, Jensen?” he yelled.

“Get up.”

The punk tried to fake Smoke out, drawing as he was getting to his boots. Smoke drew and shot him in the belly. His second shot shattered the punk's sixgun. Smoke turned and walked back into the saloon, leaving the outlaw in the dirt, hollerin' and bellerin' for his mother.

“You got an undertaker in this town?” he asked the barkeep.

“Ye ... ye ... yes, sir!” the barkeep stammered. “Got us a right good one.”

“Get him.”

“Right now, Mr. Smoke. You bet. I'm gone.”

Smoke reloaded and finished his drink.

“Ain't much to this bunch of trash,” the undertaker griped. “I'm gonna have to sell their gear to make any money.”

“You do that.”

“You know their names?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I got to have something to put on the markers.”

“You can carve on it, ‘they should have bathed more often.' ”

The marshal walked into the hotel's dining room early the next morning and over to Smoke's table. He pointed to a chair, and Smoke pushed it out with the toe of his boot.

The marshal ordered breakfast—the same thing Smoke and everybody else in the dining room was having: beef, fried potatoes, and fried eggs—and laid several sheets of paper on the table. “These may help you.”

They were flyers, wanted posters sent out by various law enforcement agencies west of the Mississippi River, and by the federal government. One was of Lee Slater.

Lee had to be the ugliest man Smoke had ever seen in his life. Ugly and mean-looking. “He sure isn't much for looks, is he?”

The marshal chuckled. “He probably didn't win any pretty-baby contests, for sure. But he's a bad one, Smoke. Vicious. He likes to hurt people. Kills for no reason. These others ride with him. Deke Carey and Curt Holt. They're both wanted for rape and murder. Everyone in his gang is facing either long prison sentences or a rope.”

“So I heard. His gang was cut down by half a dozen when they hit Big Rock. But it's still a big gang.”

“The biggest still operating in the West, Smoke. Fifty at least and some place it at closer to seventy-five. He's always run big bunches. I'll tell you what I know about him, and then I wish to God you'd leave our town before some punk huntin' a reputation learns you're here.”

Smoke did not take umbrage. “I'll do my best, Marshal.”

“Mind if I ask you a question?”

“Not at all.”

“If you'd never seen him before, how'd you know it was Lee Slater who hit your town?”

“The sheriff recognized him. Monte Carson.”

The marshal smiled. “Ol' Monte was a rounder in his day. But he was never a crook. Just a bad man to fool with.”

“Marriage settled him right down.”

“It usually does. Ask you a few more questions?”

“Sure.”

“How old are you? Early thirties?”

“That's close enough.”

“I heard what happened to your first wife and baby boy. I'm sorry. I won't dwell on that. Now you've married again—and a fine lady she is, too, so I'm told—but you're still apt to go on the prod ever' now and then. Why?”

Smoke shook his head. “Louis Longmont asked me that a couple of years ago and then answered his own question. Maybe I am the last mountain man, Marshal. There's something in me that screams out for the high lonesome. Something in me that can't tolerate punks and thugs and bullies and the like. Back in the hard scrabble hills of Missouri, while my daddy was off in the war, I kept body and soul together by eating turnips—when the garden came up, that is—and berries and what game I could kill. Many's the time I went to sleep with my belly growling. But I never stole. I never took what wasn't mine. And I won't tolerate them that do. Louis said that some people think I have a Robin Hood complex. But that's not true. I just don't like the way laws are changing, Marshal. They're not getting better, they're getting worse. I honest to God read in a Chicago newspaper a couple of months ago, that a man shot a burglar breaking into his home and the police put the homeowner in jail! Can you believe that? What in the hell is this world coming to?”

“I know. I read about it myself. But it's the 1880s now, Smoke. You got to change with the times.”

Smoke shook his head. “Not me, Marshal. Somebody does me a hurt, I'll hunt him down and settle it. Eyeball to eyeball. Man kills for no reason, or kills trying to take what isn't his, hang him. 'Cause he's no good. Now I read where the country is spending money building prisons.” He shook his head. “It's a mistake, Marshal. A hundred years from now, people will see that it's a mistake. But it'll be too late then. A man who'll lie and cheat and steal and hurt people and kill at fifteen will do the same damn thing when he's fifty. I don't care if this nation builds ten thousand prisons . . . it won't matter. It won't stop them. But a bullet will.”

Everybody in the restaurant had stopped eating and was listening to the most famous gunfighter in the world.

“I sass my daddy when I was a kid, he'd a-knocked me slap to the floor. Now we got so-called smart folks back East saying that you shouldn't whip your children. If that silliness continues and catches hold, can you imagine what it'll be like in the 1980s? There'll be no discipline, no respect for law and order. I whip my children, then I hug them to show them I love them and I tell them why I just put a belt to their rears.

“I respect the laws of God, Marshal. I'm an Old Testament man. Eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Hurt me or mine and I'm comin' after you. And man's laws be damned!”

The marshal sighed and ate his breakfast. “I hope to God I'm not the lawman who ever has to come after you, Smoke.”

“That day's coming, Marshal,” Smoke admitted. “'Cause I'll never change. Someday, a posse will come after me, hunting me down like an old lobo wolf. And when they do, the land's going to run red with blood. Because I won't go down easy.

“Marshal, if a man is hungry, can't feed his family, just come to me and I'll give them food. If they're down on their luck and really want to work, I'll give them a job, find one for them, or give them money to keep on hunting for work and eat while they're doing it. But if I catch someone stealing from me, or hurting my family, or threatening me, he's dead on the spot.

“It's a funny thing about laws and lawyers, Marshal. You take a small town that just has one lawyer, he can make a living and that's just about it. Let a second lawyer move in, and damned if they don't both get rich.”

* * *

Smoke pulled out and rode past the graveyard, located on a barren hilltop just out of town. Three mounds of earth were waiting to be shoveled in the holes.

The marshal had told him some names of men who rode with Lee Slater: Curly Rogers, Dirty Jackson, Ed Malone, Boots Pierson . . . to name just a few. They were all trash and scum. Back shooters and torturers. He had asked if Smoke planned to take on the whole gang by himself?

“Just one gang, isn't it?”

Smoke headed south, staying between the Cebolla and Cochetopa Rivers. Although the outlaws' trail was days old, it was not that difficult to follow. Their campsites were trashy reminders of just how sorry a bunch of people he was tracking. Tin cans and bottles and bloody bandages and torn, wore-out clothing clearly marked each night's site.

With San Luis Peak still to the south of him, Smoke came up on a woman sitting in front of a burned-out cabin. Only the chimney remained. He noticed several fresh-dug graves by the side of the charred ruins. The graves had not been filled in.

The woman's face bore the results of a savage beating. She looked up at him through eyes that were swollen slits. “You be the law, mister?”

“No. As far as I know there is no law within a hundred miles of here.” He swung down from the saddle and walked to her. She had fixed her torn dress as best she could; but it was little more than rags. “You had anything to eat?”

“A biscuit I had in my pocket. The outlaws tooken everything else. Before they put the house to the torch. I ain't able to move.”

Smoke took a packet of food from his saddlebags and gave it to her. “I'll get you a dipper of water from the well.”

“I wouldn't,” she told him. “They killed my kids' dogs and dumped them in the well.”

“Then I'll get you some water from the creek.”

“I'd appreciate it. I tried to get around, but I can't. They kicked my ribs in. Left me for dead. I don't think I got long 'fore I join my husband and girls. Ribs busted off and tore up a lung. Hurts.”

He found a jug and rinsed it out, filling it up with water from the creek. Looking at the woman, he could see that she was standing in death's door. Sheer determination had kept her hanging on, waiting for help, or more probably, he guessed, someone to come along that would avenge this terrible act.

“Who dug the graves, ma'am?”

“I did. The outlaws made me. Then they used my husband for target practice. Made me and my girls watch. He suffered a long time. My girls was ten and twelve years old. They raped me and made them watch. Then they raped the girls and made me watch. Then they thought they had kicked me to death. I lay real still and fooled them. They done horrible things to me and the girls. Things I won't talk about. Unnatural things. I been sittin' here for three days, prayin' and passin' out from the pain, prayin' and passin' out. Wishin' to God somebody would come along and hear my story.”

“I'm here, ma'am.”

She drifted off, not unconscious, but babbling. Some of her words made sense, most didn't. Smoke bathed her face and waited. The woman's face was hot to the touch, burning with fever. While she babbled, smoke unsaddled Buck and let him roll and water.

“Who you be?” she asked suddenly, snapping out of her delirium.

“Smoke Jensen.”

“Praise God!” she said. “Thank you, God. You sent me a warrior. I thank you.”

“Lee Slater's gang did this?”

“That's him. I heard names. Harry Jennings, Blackjack Simpson, Thumbs Morton, Bell Harrison, Al Martine. They was a Pedro and a Lopez and a Tom Post.” She coughed up blood and slipped back into delirium.

Smoke took that time to walk to the graves and look at the shallow pits. His stomach did a slow roll-over. The man had been shot to ribbons. His wife had been right: he died hard over a long period of time. The naked bodies of the children would sicken a buzzard. The kids had been used badly and savagely. People who would do this deserved no pity, no mercy . . . and the only justice they were going to get from Smoke Jensen was a bullet.

He filled in the holes and took a small Bible from his saddlebags. He read from the Old Testament and then set about making some crosses. He made four, for he knew the woman wasn't going to last much longer.

“Them names was burned in my head,” the woman said. “I made myself memorize them. They was Crown and Zack. Reed and Dumas and Mac. They was a Ray and a Sandy and some young punks called themselves Pecos, Carson, and Hudson. Three more pimply faced punks hung with them three. They was all savages. Just as mean and vicious as any man amongst 'em. They was called Concho, Bull, and Jeff.”

Smoke rolled one of his rare cigarettes and waited, squatting down beside the dying woman.

“I recollect hearin' a man they called Lake and another man they called Taylor. Dear God in Heaven it was a long two days they stayed here.” She looked at him. Her eyes were unusually bright and clear. “Did I dream it, or did you put dirt over my family?”

“I buried them and read words from the Bible.”

“Thank you. I'm sorry, but I don't remember no more names of them outlaws.”

“I'll find out who the rest of them were. Did they all... ah? . . .” He didn't know quite how to say it. But the woman did.

“Yes. Several times. One of my girls died while they was abusin' her. You got kids of your own, Mr. Smoke?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know how I must feel.”

“I believe so.”

“I heard them say they was goin' to take over part of Colorado.”

“The only thing they're going to take over is a grave, ma'am.”

“That's good. You got a hole dug for me?”

“Yes.”

“I reckon it's about time then.” She closed her eyes, smiled, and said, “Thank you, God, for sending me a warrior.” Then the woman leaned her head back and died.

 

 

Smoke buried the woman and moved on, making camp a few miles from the scene of cruelty and savageness. He would try that little town on the Rio Grande, on the southern edges of the La Garita Mountains; see if any of the scum had ridden in there. What was the name of that place? Yeah, it came to him. Somebody had named it Gap.

Wasn't much to Gap, Smoke thought, as he approached the town from the north. A saloon, a little hotel, a general store, a cafe and barber shop. Maybe two dozen houses. He swung down in front of the small livery and looked at the man sitting in a cane-bottomed chair in front of the place.

“That horse has got a mean eye on him,” the man said.

“Feed him, curry him, and take care of him,” Smoke said, dropping the reins. “Give him all the grain he wants. And don't get behind him. He'll kick the crap out of you.”

“Gonna cost you extra for me to take care of that wall-eyed bastard.”

Buck lifted his head and showed the man his big teeth.

“Don't call him names. He's sensitive about that.”

“I'll make a deal with you,” the man said. “You stable and feed him, and I'll just charge you for what he eats.”

“That's fair enough. Livery looks full.”

“Bunch of lawmen in here, U-nited States marshals; stayin' over to the ho-tel. Chasin' some gang, they is.” He squinted his eyes. “Don't I know you?”

“Never been here before in my life.”

“You shore look familiar. I seen your pitcher somewhere. Maybe on a wanted poster?”

Smoke laughed. “Not likely. I ranch up north of here, outside of Big Rock.”

“That's Smoke Jensen's country. He's kilt a thousand men.”

“Not quite that many.”

“You know him?”

“I know him. You got a marshal in this town?”

“Yep. Right over there's his office.” The man pointed. “Name is Bradley.”

Smoke took his gear and checked in at the hotel. He got the last room available. He registered as Jen Sen.