Code of the Mountain Man (22 page)

“I wonder if they were celebrating the news of my death?” he muttered, then rode on.

He came upon what appeared to be a dead man lying by the side of the road that led to Rio. He dismounted and knelt down beside him, rolling him over. Not dead, just dead drunk. Smoke slapped him awake.

The man opened his eyes and started to scream when he recognized the man standing over him. Smoke put a hand on the man's mouth, shushing him.

“Don't yell,” he told him. “You understand?”

“But you're dead!” the man said, after Smoke removed his hand.

“I'm a long way from being dead,” Smoke corrected him. “Do I look dead to you?”

“No. But you shore look some terrible tore up.”

“Tell me what went on back by the pass.”

The man brought Smoke up to date, still convinced he was conversing with a ghost.

“I see,” Smoke said, when the man had finished. “You're going to freeze to death if you lay out here the rest of the night.”

“It don't seem to have bothered you none! 'Sides, I got me a claim about a mile from here. I can make it, providin' I don't run into no more ghosts.”

Chuckling, Smoke left the man and rode on. Just about ten miles outside of town, Smoke found a good place to camp and bedded down for the rest of the night. He slept deeply and awakened well after dawn, feeling at least part of his enormous strength once more returning to him. He did a few exercises, copied after a great cat's stretchings, to get the kinks out of his muscles, then cooked the last of the dead outlaw's food and boiled the last of the coffee.

He pulled out his makin's sack and rolled a cigarette, enjoying that with the last cup of coffee. He found a spare sixgun in the saddle bags and dug out the two extra he had in his pack. He checked them all out and loaded them up full, then checked the rifle again.

He talked to the horse for a moment before saddling up, and the horse seemed eager to ride. He wondered if Louis had gone back and gotten his horses. He would soon know.

He had traveled about three miles, he reckoned, when the sounds of galloping horses reached him, coming up fast behind him. He pulled off into timber and waited.

The Lee Slater gang, Luttie with them, along with One-Eyed Jake and his bounty hunters. Smoke wanted them to get into town and have one good drink of whiskey before he threw down the challenge.

He stopped to water his horse, and as he knelt down to drink, he was shocked at the reflection staring back at him. His face was bloody and cut and swollen. His hair was matted with dried blood from where the slug had grazed him – on both sides. He looked like something out of Hell.

Which was fine with him. The gunhands better get used to Hell, 'cause that's where Smoke intended to send them.

Smoke reined up and dismounted at the edge of town. He looked up at the sun. Directly overhead. High noon. He pulled saddle and bridle off the horse and turned it loose to water and roll and graze.

Smoke loosened his guns in leather, then stuck the extra .44s behind his gun belt, the fifth .44 jammed down into his legging, right side. He waved a burly, bearded man over to him.

“Yeah?” the man asked, walking over to him. He took a long second look, his mouth dropping open. “Holy Christ!” the man whispered.

“Clear the streets,” Smoke told him.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Smoke. Ever'body said you was dead!”

“Well, I'm not. I just look it. Move.”

The miner ran toward the marshal's office and threw open the door, and almost got himself shot for that rash act. “Whoa!” he cried, as Johnny, Louis, Earl, and Cotton jerked iron. “I ain't even carryin' no sidearm. Smoke Jensen just rode into town. He's up yonder.” He pointed. “He looks like death warmed over. But he said to clear the streets. He's all muddy and bloody and mean clear through. Got guns a-hangin' all over him.”

“Hot damn!” Earl said.

“I'll run tell Charlie!” Mills said. “Sharp, take the men and clear the streets of people and horses.”

Louis pointed a finger at Cotton. “Go to Sally. Tell her the news.”

“I'm gone!” Cotton ran from the office.

“This is Smoke's fight,” Louis said. “But we can keep a eye out for ambushers and back-shooters.”

The men took down sawed-off shotguns, stuffed their pockets with shells and stepped out of the office. The main street was already deserted.

Luttie was lifting his second glass of rye to his lips when the wild scream of an enraged panther cut the still, hot air. He spilled half his drink down his shirt-front.

“Jesus Christ!” Tom said.

“It can't be!” Pecos shouted, frantically brushing at his crotch where he'd dropped his cigarette. “He fell off a damn mountain.”

Rod and Randy giggled.

Dan Diamond looked at One-Eyed Jake, disbelief in his eyes.

Frankie Deevers loaded up his guns full.

Martine's fingers were trembling as the cry of a panther changed to the howling of a lobo wolf. He crossed himself and stood up.

Charlie Starr chuckled in his bed and propped a couple of pillows behind him, then lifted the canvas and tied it back. He pulled out his long-barreled six-guns and checked them.

Sally smiled and put on a pot of coffee. Smoke would want a good strong cup of coffee when this was over. She knew her man well.

Larry Tibbson loaded up a sawed-off express gun and took a position near the center of the boom town.

The stage rolled in, the driver and guard taking a quick look at the deserted street. “Oh, my God!” the driver said, his eyes touching on the tall bloody man standing at the end of the long street. He threw the strongbox and mail pouch to the ground and yelled at his horses to get gone.

Mills tore open the mail pouch and jerked out a letter, quickly scanning it. With a yell of excitement, he jumped up and said, “Here it is! The warrants against Smoke Jensen have been dropped. It's signed by the President of the United States!”

“Damn that President Arthur!” Luttie said.

Morris Pattin stepped out of the barber shop where he'd just had a haircut and a bath. He brushed back his new coat, freeing his guns, and walked up the street toward Smoke Jensen. He was shocked at the man's appearance. Jensen looked like something out of hell.

“I'll take you now, Jensen,” he called.

“You'll kiss the devil's behind before you do,” Smoke told him, then lifted his rifle in his left hand and drilled the bounty hunter from a hundred yards out.

The slug hit the manhunter in the center of his chest, and Morris was down and dying without ever having a chance to pull iron – not that it would have done him a bit of good at that distance.

Sally moved the coffee pot off the griddle and decided she would wait a few minutes before dumping in the coffee. She wanted Smoke to have a good hot fresh cup of coffee.

Charlie caught movement by the edge of a building and jacked back the hammer on his old six-gun. It would be a good shot for him, but he figured he could do it. He smiled as he recognized the gunfighter from down Yuma way. Couldn't think of his name. Didn't make no difference; the gravedigger could just carve “Yuma” on the marker.

Yuma lifted his rifle and sighted Smoke in. Charlie took him out with a neck shot at seventy-five yards.

“Damn good shootin',” Charlie complimented himself, as Yuma slumped to the dirt. “I'd a not done 'er with one of them new short-barreled things.”

Photographers had quickly set up their boxy equipment, filled the flash-trays, and were ready to record it all for posterity.

Smoke stepped out of the street and ducked into an alley.

Tom Post looked up and down and all around. “Where'd he go?” He asked Lopez. The men were in the general store, pricing new suits of clothes they planned to buy with the reward money. Or steal them, now that the shopkeeper and his woman had locked themselves in the storeroom.

“Right behind you,” Smoke said calmly.

Tom and Lopez turned, jerking iron.

They were far too slow.

Smoke had leaned the rifle up against a counter and stood with both hands filled with Colts, the Colts spitting lead and belching fire and gunsmoke.

Lopez took two rounds in the chest, dropped his guns, staggered backward, and fell out one of the big storefront windows. He crashed to the boardwalk and lay amid the broken glass, kicking and cursing his life away.

Tom was doubled over with two slugs in his belly. He fell to the floor and lay moaning. Smoke kicked the man's gun away and reloaded his own. He took a sawed-off shotgun from the rack and broke it open, shoving in shells and filling his pockets from the open box.

“You a no good sorry son!” Post groaned.

“Don't lose any sleep over it,” Smoke told him, then stepped out to the back of the store.

The young punk Bull, from Pecos' gang, was running up the alley, wild-eyed, cussing, and both hands full of guns. Smoke let him have both barrels of the sawed-off twelve gauge. The buckshot lifted the punk off his boots and sent him crashing into an open-doored outhouse. The punk died sitting on the hole, crapping into his pants.

Smoke punched fresh rounds into the Greener and walked on, pausing when he heard the sounds of someone running.

Curt Holt rounded a corner, running as hard as he could, his hands full of six-guns. He slid to a halt and lifted them. Smoke blew what was left of him – after the man took two rounds of buckshot at pointblank range in the guts – through a window of someone's living quarters behind a saddleshop.

“Good Jesus Christ!” he heard someone shout from inside. “What a mess.”

“I believe Mr. Jensen is very upset,” Larry muttered to Sharp, who had joined him.

“I wholeheartedly agree,” the U.S. Marshal said.

In the saloon, Rod and Randy giggled insanely, Rod saying, “Come, brother. We'll put an end to this nonsense.”

Johnny North was waiting on the boardwalk. As soon as the brothers stepped through the batwings, Johnny started shooting, cocking and firing in one long continuous roar of thunder and smoke. The Karl Brothers did a macabre dance of the dying on the boardwalk as they soaked up lead. Randy fell into a horsetrough and died with both arms hanging over the sides. Rod lay draped over a hitchrail. He giggled as he died.

Dewey and Gooden, freshly released from jail, stepped out into the street and yelled at Johnny, knowing his guns were probably empty.

Louis stepped out of his gambling hall, his eyes hard. He emptied his guns into the pair. They lay in the dust, their outlawing days over.

Reporters were scribbling and photographers' flashpans were puffing as they recorded it all for their readers back East.

The foreman of the Seven Slash stepped into the alley and faced Smoke, both hands hovering over the butts of his guns. “You ain't got the balls to drop that Greener and drag iron with me, Jensen.”

“Courage has nothing to do with it,” Smoke told him. “But time is of the essence.”

He pulled the triggers on the express gun, and the foreman's earthly cares and woes were a thing of the past.

Smoke walked up the alley to stand in the cool shadows, looking out into the street.

In the saloon, Luttie looked at Lee. “It's been a good, long run, Lee. Now it's over.”

Lee swore. “It may be over for you, but it ain't over for me. I'm gonna kill that damn Jensen oncest and forever.”

“I wish you luck,” his brother said, lifting a shot glass in salute.

Lee walked out the back of the saloon.

“You're a fool, brother. But then, I've always known that.” Luttie drank his whiskey and turned around, his back to the bar, facing the batwings.

Smoke heard the hammer cocking behind him and dropped to his knees in the alley just as the slug hammered the pine boards above his head. Smoke leveled the shotgun, and gave Curly a gut-full of buckshot. Curly's boots flew out from under him, and he smashed down to earth, lying on his back; the charge had nearly cut him in two.

Smoke was out of shotgun shells. He laid the Greener down and pulled his Colts, jacking the hammers back. He scanned the street for trouble. He couldn't see it, but knew it was there, waiting for him.

Smoke eased back down the alley, a .44 in both hands. He was facing south, the sun just beginning its dip toward the west. A thin shadow fell across the end of the alleyway. Smoke paused, pressing against the outside wall of the building.

“You see him, Milt?” someone called in a hoarse, softly accented whisper.

“Naw,” the voice came from just around the corner, back of the building, belonging to the shadow that was still evident on the weedy ground.

Milt stepped out and Smoke drilled him, the slug snapping his head back as it hit him in the forehead.

Smoke hit the ground and rolled under the building.

Pedro jumped out, a puzzled look on his face. Smoke shot him twice in the belly, and the puzzled look was replaced by one of intense pain. The outlaw fell to his knees, both .45s going off, blowing up dirt and dust and rocks. He cursed for a moment, then fell over, still alive, but for how long was something that only God could answer.

Dan Diamond and One-Eye were walking boldly down the boardwalk, toward the sounds of shooting when Cotton stepped out of a doorway and faced them.

“I told you it'd be someday, One-Eye,” Cotton said. “Why not now?” He jerked iron and shot the manhunter in the belly.

Dan fired just as Cotton stepped to one side, the slug knocking a chunk out of the building. He missed but Cotton didn't. Dan folded and sat down heavily on the boardwalk for a moment. He looked up at Cotton.

“Is Pickens really your last name?”

“That it is.”

“Cotton Pickens,” Dan said, then died with a smile on his lips.

Smoke was standing in the alley when the manhunters Davy and Val rode out. He nodded at them and they nodded at him and then were gone. Smoke let them go. They just came after the wrong man, that's all.

Smoke stepped out and walked up the steps to the boardwalk. The town was eerily quiet. Most of the citizens were either inside looking out of windows, or had locked themselves behind doors. The reporters and photographers were the only ones other than the combatants on the street, crouching behind horsetroughs and peeking out of open alleyways. Smoke had always figured that reporters didn't have a lick of sense.

A man stepped out of the shadows. Lee Slater. His hands were wrapped around the butts of Colts, as were Smoke's hands. “I'm gonna kill you, Jensen!” he screamed.

A rifle barked, the slug striking Lee in the middle of his back and exiting out the front. The outlaw gang leader lay dead on the hot dusty street.

Sally Jensen stepped back into Louis' gambling hall and jacked another round into her carbine.

Smoke smiled at her and walked on down the boardwalk.

“Looking for me, amigo?” Al Martine spoke from the shadows of a doorway. His guns were in leather.

“Not really. Ride on, Al.”

“Why would you make such an offer to me? I am an outlaw, a killer. I hunted you in the mountains.”

“You have a family, Al?”

“Si. A father and mother, brothers and sister, all down in Mexico.”

“Why don't you go pay them a visit? Hang up your guns for a time.”

The Mexican smiled and finished rolling a cigarette. He lit it and held it to Smoke's lips.

“Thanks, Al.”

“Thank you, Smoke. I shall be in Chihuahua. If you ever need me, send word, everybody knows where to find me. I will come very quickly.”

“I might do that.”

“Adios, compadre.” Al stepped off the boardwalk and was gone.

Smoke finished the cigarette, grateful for the lift the tobacco gave him. His eyes never stopped moving, scanning the buildings, the alleyways, the street.

He caught movement on the second floor of the saloon, the hotel part. Sunlight off a rifle barrel. He lifted a .44 and triggered off two fast rounds. The rifle dropped to the awning, a man following it out. Zack fell through the awning and crashed to the boardwalk. He did not move.

Rich Coleman and Frankie stepped out of the saloon, throwing lead, and Smoke dived for the protection of a water trough.

“I got him!” Frankie yelled.

Smoke rose to one knee and changed Frankie's whole outlook on life – what remained of it.