Cunning of the Mountain Man (22 page)

“We’re to take them to the B-Bar-H. Sir Geoffrey wants to entertain them for a while,” Forrest Gore replied with a lustful leer.

* * *

Jeff York pointed ahead to what Smoke Jensen had already seen. “Someone’s sure foggin’ the road this way,” the Arizona Ranger stated the obvious.

“Must have come from a long way off,” Smoke stated flatly. “I’ve been watching the dust rise for a good twenty minutes.”

“Carbone said you had the eyes of a halcon—a hawk,” Jeff said softly “Now I believe him. Who do you think it could be?”

Smoke studied the growing column of red-brown dust, and the thin line far behind. “Not someone we’re going to enjoy meeting.”

“Quint Stalker and his gang?” Jeff suggested.

“It could be, Jeff. Right funny if we set out hunting them and they find us first.”

“I’d maybe see the fun in it, if we still had Walt and Ty along,” came Jeff’s glum reply.

Smoke looked around the barren desert terrain. “There’s nowhere to hide out here.”

“There’d be plenty, if you were an Apache.”

Smoke cut his eyes sharply to Jeff. “Think like an Indian. That’s a shinin’ idea, Jeff. Let’s get busy.”

A quick coursing of the ground located a shallow gully. Smoke and Jeff rode into it and dismounted. At Smoke’s direction, they stripped the saddlebags from their mounts and put the animals down on their sides. With stones from the bottom of the wash, they reinforced the lip of the draw in two places and set out rifles and ammunition.

“Nothing left to do but wait,” Jeff spoke out of nervousness.

“Not for long, either.” Smoke had already picked up the distant, growing rumble of wheels that moved fast and carried a heavy burden.

They had a good view down the reverse slope of the elongated ridge where they had found the gully. Only thing, the road curved out of sight against the swell of the land a scant three hundred yards away. Outriders came into view first.

Smoke caught sight of the heads of their horses, then the forward-bent outlines of three men, riding abreast. Behind them came a six-up team, hauling a lumbering coach. The men to the rear of the carriage had their weapons out and ready, and kept casting glances behind them.

“Whoever it is, looks like they’re in some sort of trouble.”

“I reckon, Jeff. Only, which side do we pick?” At Jeff’s droll expression, Smoke went on. “Reckon we let them get in close enough to see if we recognize any of them.”

“Not too close, I hope,” Jeff suggested. “I count nine men, plus whoever is in that coach.”

“Funny there’s no one up on that box to drive.” Jeff nodded understanding at Smoke’s observation.

By then the lead riders had come well within field glass range. Smoke studied the faces, and his full lips thinned into a grim line. He put the binoculars aside and levered a round into the chamber of his Winchester.

“One of them is Quint Stalker,” Jeff advised a moment later.

“Well, we know which side we’re on,” Smoke tossed back as he made ready for a fight.

Quint Stalker had obtained a horse at the first homestead they came upon after escaping from the White Mountains. He used the simple expedient of stealing it. He had so far ridden two mounts into the ground, and the team hauling that armor-plated carriage had been replaced three times. The cause of their unseemly haste hovered tauntingly on the western horizon.

Contrary to the assurances of Miguel Selleres, the Apaches had continued in pursuit, and by all appearances, the Arizona Rangers rode with them. Try as he might, Quint Stalker could not visualize those two traditional enemies as allies. Yet they had joined against him and the eight men who remained. That conclusion had been reached in the moment Quint swerved his mount to the left to avoid a large rock in the trail.

That movement put the bullet meant for his heart in the eye of his horse, and killed the animal instantly. When the dead beast’s foreknees hit the hard, red-brown soil, Quint Stalker catapulted out of the saddle. He hit hard, the air driven from his lungs, and rolled along in the sharp-edged gravel that lay in his path.

His chin took a lot of punishment, and wound up bleeding profusely when he sprawled to a halt. What the hell? Those Injuns couldn’t have gotten ahead of them. After his ordeal, thoughts didn’t stick too well in Quint’s mind. He tried to see to his left, from where the shot came, only everything looked fuzzy. Then his blood turned to ice.

From behind, he heard the coach bearing down on him.

He’d be squashed into a red pulp by two dozen hooves. To say nothing of those wheels! Squalling, Quint lurched upward and threw himself to one side. He could see the hooves of the horses up close, and feel the heat of their bodies as they thundered past. The swaying carriage halted directly beside him.

“Get in here, you idiot!” Miguel Selleres growled from the open doorway.

Grateful for the protection of those armored walls, Quint Stalker did so with alacrity. Once secure, he found himself the target of unanswerable questions.

“What happened out there?”

Quint Stalker gaped at Miguel Selleres. “I . . . don’t know. Someone shot my horse out from under me.” 

“Who? How many? I don’t see anyone,” Selleres rattled off, while squinting out the firing loop of one window. “It can’t be
los indios
,” he added to himself. “That’s what I thought, and you’re right. It can’t be.” 

“Then who?”

Stalker’s first attempt at an answer got drowned out by the loud slam of bullets into the side of the coach. In a brief lull, he tried again. “Smoke Jensen.”

“
¡
Bastante, no mas!
” Selleres barked. “We have enough men to finish him for all time.”

He came to his feet and leaned over the seated outlaw. A hinged panel in the back of the coach opened, and Selleres shouted through it. “Get over there and find who’s shooting at us.”

At once the gunmen spread out, and jumped their horses toward the lip of the ravine. Withering fire challenged them, yet they pushed on. One hard case yowled and clutched at his arm, where a bloodstain began to spread. Another doubled over, lips to the neck of his mount, as though kissing it. The remainder drew off, seeking cover behind the carriage.

“
¡
Cobardes! 
¡
Pendejos!
Get out there and kill those men! I see only two guns against you. 
¡
Adalante, pronto!
” With obvious reluctance, the outlaws charged again. This time they fired steadily at the noted gun positions. Their heavy volume of fire forced Smoke and Jeff to pull down below the lip of the bank. Selleres watched with growing satisfaction. The riders reached the edge of the gully.

Then a gunhawk from Albuquerque threw up his hands and fell backward off his horse. Smoke Jensen had switched to his .44 and blasted upward into the man’s face. Jeff York opened up also. Bullets gouged the ground and cracked through the air. Another gunhawk grunted in pain, as one of Smoke’s slugs pierced his left leg, front to rear, right below the knee. Suddenly they had had enough.

Huddling behind the armored coach, they heard a muffled string of curses from inside. The shutters opened on one window, and they saw the face of Quint Stalker. “Get over there and finish it, you sonsabitches.”

“Give us some covering fire, damn you,” Charlie Bascomb snarled.

“Yeah—yeah, good idea. Spread out, hit them from two sides. We’ll keep their heads down.”

It worked even better than Miguel Selleres expected from the thoroughly demoralized gunmen. He and Quint Stalker opened fire first, the riders charged out from behind the carriage, and streaked for the arroyo ahead of and behind the position of the ambushers. Victory lay only fractions of a second away.

Then Selleres and Stalker learned how deceptive the desert terrain could be to eyes accustomed to a fifteen-mile horizon. Around the bend in the road that masked the back trail, swarmed some twenty Apache warriors and a dozen Arizona Rangers. Rapidly closing ground they opened fire immediately. Miguel Selleres weighed the outcome quickly and accurately.

“Get us out of here,” he snapped to the driver at his side.

Tallpockets Granger saw the coach stopped in the road ahead. A dead horse lay on its side behind the armor-plated vehicle. Someone had ambushed them. He knew that someone had to be Capt. Jeff York. At once he turned in the saddle, waved an arm over his head, and pointed forward.

“Unlimber your irons, boys. It looks like ol’ Jeff’s bit a bear in the butt.”

They crashed into the nearer trio of outlaws with rifles and six-guns blazing. One man fell without a sound, shot through the head. Another took two bullets in his side and dropped from the saddle. The last threw up his hands. The Apaches accompanying the Rangers streamed on by, intent on taking on the child-killers beyond the coach. Suddenly the vehicle bolted forward, the horses straining to pull the heavy load.

Terror blanched the faces of the
Pen-dik-olye
as Cuchillo Negro and his warriors raced toward them. One had self-control enough to steady his mount and take careful aim. Smoke Jensen rose up slightly and put a slug through his chest. The gunhawk made a gurgling cry as he fell sideways off his saddle.

His companions started dying seconds later, hard and slowly, as the Apaches swarmed over them. It took some time to stop them. While the Rangers did what they could to drag the vengeful warriors off the outlaws, Tallpockets Granger pounded boots to the edge of the draw.

“Thought it might be you, Cap’n,” he drawled through a grin. A nod toward Smoke. “Mr. Jensen, good to see you again. Them horses you brought us worked real good. Let us run the hell out of those
ladrones
.”

Smoke came up onto the level. “Glad you like them. What brings you over this way?”

“We decided to wipe out that Stalker gang once and for all. Besides, I sort of figgered ol’ Jeff here might need some help.”

“And the Apaches?” Jeff asked with a nod toward Cuchillo Negro.

“They’re my deputies.” At Jeff’s astonished gape, he added, “We’re after the same enemy, Cap’n.”

Smoke clapped a hand on one shoulder of Granger. “Then they are as welcome as can be. Only thing that bothers me, is that coach got away. I thought we’d shot it to doll rags.”

“Wouldn’t have done no good,” Tallpockets informed Smoke. “That belongs to Miguel Selleres. It’s all made of boiler plate under thin wood.”

“That ties everything together,” Smoke allowed, after hearing an account of the battle in the White Mountains. “I think the time has come to move directly on Benton-Howell and his partner.”

* * *

Tallpockets Granger volunteered his posse of deputy Arizona Rangers. That gave them an effective force of fifteen. To Smoke’s surprise, the Apaches led by Cuchillo Negro offered to continue as deputies to Tallpockets. At the suggestion of Smoke Jensen, they rode first to the Tucker ranch to enlist any others who wanted to join the fight.

“A good place to start is in Socorro. We can clean out the trash that Benton-Howell has been gathering, then close in on the ranch,” Smoke declared.

When they reached the Tucker ranch two hours later, a wounded hand, Sean Quade, gave them the bad news. “They killed Hub and Carter,” he concluded “and took Miz Tucker and the kids.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know all of them. Some of the trash that’s been showin’ up in town. Forrest Gore led them. I saw him clear.”

“Which way did they go?” Smoke asked with winter in his voice.

Quade scratched an isolated circle of sandy hair that hung down his forehead. “Southwest, toward Socorro.”

Shock at learning of the abduction had turned to cold, controlled anger in Smoke Jensen. “Then that’s the way we’re going. We’ll send a doctor out to take care of that leg, Sean,” Smoke advised the wounded man.

“Damned right,” Jeff agreed.

“I’m goin’, too,” Sean Quade stated flatly.

Jeff York tried to reason with Quade. “You wouldn’t be much use with a bullet in your leg.”

“I can sit on my butt in a buckboard, and use a shotgun,” Sean defended his decision.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” Smoke Jensen told the man. “The ride in could knock you out, or worse.” Quade could not argue with that. “All right. I’ll stay here and wait for the doc. Good luck . . . and keep your heads down.”

Socorro literally burst at the seams with gunfighters and wannabes. From beyond rifle range, Smoke Jensen studied the crowded streets through field glasses. When he had worked out in his mind how it should be done, he turned to Cuchillo Negro and spoke, with Tallpockets translating.

“I want to save you as a nasty surprise for the gun-hawks in there.”

The Apache chief pulled his full lips into a grim smile. “These white men will have no heart for the fight when we attack.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. They won’t think much of the rest of us riding in. We can take a few by surprise. But the best of them will fort up somewhere. When that happens, and we get bogged down, you hit them from the far side of town.”

Cuchillo Negro cut his eyes to Tallpockets. “This one thinks like a
Tinde
.”

Tallpockets rendered it in English. Smoke nodded in acceptance of the compliment. “I learned most of my fighting skills from a man named Preacher.”

Eyes widened Cuchillo Negro grunted harshly. “My father knew such a man and spoke of him often. We
Tinde
called him Gray Wolf. No other man could move so silently, or fight so ferociously. I do not say that lightly.”

“He’d be proud to know you folks thought so highly of him,” Smoke returned.

Black Knife smiled around his eyes. “Many
Chiricahua, Mescaleros
, and
Tinde
died before we learned to respect him.”

That could go on Preacher’s headstone, if he had one
, Smoke thought. “They had plenty company,” he told the Apache chief.

A second later, the Apaches left for their position. They seemed to dissolve into the empty terrain. One moment they were in plain view, the next, only faint puffs of dust showed where their horses had walked. And they had this great respect for his mentor. For perhaps the thousandth time, Smoke saw Preacher in yet a new light.