Spirit Of The Mountain Man/ordeal Of The Mountain Man (Pinnacle Westerns) (10 page)

“Yer not sellin’ anything to him,” the self-appointed leader brayed, a stubby finger pointed at Smoke. “He’s workin’ for that Luscomb woman.” He knew that much, but he didn’t know who Smoke was.

The proprietor bristled. “I’ll sell to whomever I please.”

“Not anymore.” The reply crackled in the suddenly tense atmosphere of the room. “Y’see, that’s what I came to tell you. Mr. Buckner has decided this has gone on long enough. He’s buying you out as of today. I brung over the papers, all legal and such. All you gotta do is sign.” Grinning, he shoved forward the papers.

Reflexively the store keeper took them and began to read aloud.
“‘For the sum of one dollar, and other valuable considerations, I, Howard Leach, do agree to sell and convey all interest and claim to the property, building and contents thereof…’
One dollar! I wouldn’t sell for ten thousand times that sum. And I would never sell to Olin Buckner and those scum he associates with. Now, get out of here, Tyson.”

Swiftly, the grin on the face of Zeke Tyson turned to a thunderous scowl. “I even brought you your dollar. You’ll take it, if you know what’s smart.”

No question remained in the mind of Smoke Jensen as to how he would side in this matter. He eased away from the counter and faced off with the thug. “The man said he didn’t want to sell.”

Snarling, the hard case reached out and began to tap the chest of Smoke Jensen with one stubby finger. He made a big mistake. “Keep yourself shut of this, saddle trash. Best you get out of here and hit the road.”

“Please.”

“Please what?”

“Please
get out. And
please
hit the road.”

Pushed beyond the extremely low threshold of his temper, the dull-witted Tyson exploded with rage. “You five-and-dime tinhorn.” He looked Smoke up and down with utter disdain, noting the low-slung righthand rig, with the .44 Colt Model ’60, and the other one, worn slant-wise, at belt level on the left hip, butt outward. “You fancy yourself a gunfighter, eh? You’re just about to find out what that word means.”

“Please, Tyson, take it outside,” Howard Leach appealed.

Frothing at the mouth, the thug whirled on the merchant. “All right, Howie, we’ll do just that. Then, when I’m done, I’m gonna come back in here and get your signature on that paper or spread it with your brains.”

Tyson led the way out into the street. Two of his henchmen followed. They spread out, with one hard case leaning on a rain barrel across the main drag, the other some twenty feet east of Zeke Tyson. Smoke Jensen came next, with the last thug behind him. Smoke made note that the lout remained at his back. It troubled him somewhat, though not a great deal. Tyson spread thick, trunklike legs, and stood flat-footed in the center of the avenue.

His words came in a jeering bray. “Any time yer ready, tinhorn.”

Smoke raised a hand in a halting gesture and took a quick sidestep to his left. “You’re the one who wanted this, not I. If you want to make a play, go ahead. But get this scumsucker out from behind me first.”

“Tally likes it right where he is. Don’t ya, Tally?”

“Sure enough, Zeke,” came the mocking reply from behind Smoke Jensen.

“Well, then, in that case, if you haven’t anything more to puke out of that overworked mouth of yours, I suppose it is up to me to open this dance.”

So saying, Smoke spun and dropped to one knee. His righthand Colt appeared in his hand in a blur and he shot Tally dead-center in the chest. Tally thrust himself backward and slammed into the front wall of the mercantile. Pain blurred his vision and he waggled the Merwin and Hulbert .44 in his left hand uncertainly, in search of a target.

Only Smoke Jensen had moved the moment his six-gun recoiled in his grip. He did a shoulder roll that put him ten feet from where he had started and well out of the line of fire from either Tally or Tyson. Unfortunately for Tally, the move had been made too swiftly. Zeke Tyson had fisted his own six-gun and let roar. The slug cut through air where Smoke Jensen had been and slammed into the bulging stomach of Buck Tally.

“Oh, God, Zeke, you done kilt me,” Tally panted out. Gut-shot, his words came out coated in crimson. He slid to a sitting position with a mighty groan. His boot heels drummed on the planks of the boardwalk and he stiffened suddenly. A great gout of blood vomited explosively from his distorted lips and he fell over dead.

“Jesus, nobody can shoot that fast,” one of the remaining toughs with Zeke Tyson babbled as he stared at the fallen gunman.

“Get him, goddamnit!” Tyson shouted. “What are you two good for?”

From his place in the center of the street, one quickly showed that he was good for dying. He tracked his already-drawn six-gun toward Smoke Jensen, who ducked below the rim of a horse trough and hugged the ground a moment. When slugs punched through the spongy wood of the opposite side and began to spill water onto the ground, Smoke popped up, sighted quickly, and blasted a lead messenger of death into the heart of the hapless hard case.

Staggered, he discharged his weapon in the general direction of Smoke Jensen and dropped to both knees. Smoke felt the heat of the bullet as it cracked past his right ear. His fourth round struck solid bone in the skull of the wounded gunman and put him into the next world. Smoke moved the instant after he fired.

Desperately, Zeke Tyson made his try for Smoke Jensen. In all his short life, Zeke had never seen anyone so fast and so accurate as this saddle tramp. His own slug cut through emptiness where the dauntless gunfighter had been a moment before. Then it was his turn to look down the muzzle of a leveled .44. He immediately did what any red-blooded, first-rate gunfighter would do. He ran like hell for the safety of a nearby alleyway.

Smoke Jensen turned his attention to the remaining henchman. Thoroughly cowed by the speed and deadliness of their intended victim, he had ducked behind the flimsy cover of the rain barrel. To his regret, it had not rained in twenty-seven days and the level in the barrel had dropped to only a couple of inches. He shot around its bulging middle and drew greatly unwanted return fire.

With the ease of a bar of lead dropped in a mud hole, Smoke’s slugs cut through the oak staves of the intervening cylinder and out the other side to lodge in the chest of the crouching gunhand. Without a sound, he spread out on his back on the boardwalk. Smoke Jensen waited a moment, then approached cautiously.

Only a dwindling light remained in the eyes of the dying man. Pink foam bubbled from the holes in his chest and a spreading pool of red surrounded his shoulders. Concentrating his energy, he formed breathy words.

“Who…who are…you…mister?”

“They call me Smoke Jensen.”

Understanding bloomed in those dead man’s eyes. “I…I should…have…known. I’m…I’m dead, ain’t I?”

No reason to hide the truth, Smoke reasoned. “You soon will be.”

“Gawd, it…don’t hurt any less.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Gettin’…done in…by the—the…best.” Then he gave a mighty convulsive heave and died.

That’s the moment Zeke Tyson chose to fire a shot from ambush. The bullet whipped by close enough to cut the hat from the head of Smoke Jensen. Smoke turned and drew his second Colt from its high holster. The muzzle tracked right and he fired into the puffball of powder smoke that lingered at the corner of the alley. It struck nothing and Smoke heard the thud of retreating boots. Prudence cautioned him that it would be foolish to go in and dig out the man. Instead, he crossed the street.

In the doorway, the merchant stood with an expression of awe on his face. “Lawsie, you did for them right sudden like. Mister Jensen, your custom is welcome in my establishment any time.”

Smoke gazed on him with a hard eye. “Will it still be when I come after Olin Buckner?”

“Yes, sir. You can count on it.”

When Smoke Jensen returned to town at the head of a large band of gunfighter friends and a number of oldtimer mountain man acquaintances from his days with Preacher, the store keeper stood true to his word. Although by that time, he wore one arm in a sling, the result of a savage beating he had taken from Buckner’s henchmen.

Smoke had personally cleaned the plows of those responsible and they presently inhabited the hilltop cemetery west of town. In retaliation, Buckner had hired an army of gunfighters, put a bounty on the head of Smoke Jensen, and sat back to enjoy the results. That consequence soon bankrupted Olin Buckner and cleared the way for the final showdown.

After some judicious whittling away of the odds, Smoke and his rugged band closed in on the Crystal Cage Saloon, Buckner’s headquarters. The fighting grew fierce and, at one point, it looked as though Smoke Jensen and his allies might go down in defeat. Two men had gained the roof of the bank across the street from the general store positioning themselves to shoot Smoke Jensen in the back. That was when the steadfast merchant took a hand in the game. He burst through the doors to his business, his trusty shotgun in hand and shouted to Smoke.

“Smoke! Look out! On top the bank.”

Smoke had started to whirl around when the shotgun boomed and the store keeper blew one of the hard cases off his feet. Smoke settled with the other a second later. Smoke waved his six-gun at the man and quickly set to reloading.

“Thanks, I owe you one,” the famous gunfighter told the merchant.

“Way I figure it, I still owe you a couple, Mr. Jensen,” he responded, beaming.

Balance quickly shifted in the fighting. When he finally closed with Buckner, Smoke Jensen administered a thorough thrashing with iron hard fists. Bleeding and broken, Buckner lay slumped in defeat in a corner of a room above the saloon. But only for a moment. From an inside coat pocket, Buckner produced a two-shot, .50 caliber derringer. Racking back the hammer of the short-barreled, under-powered weapon, Buckner fought to get enough air to rail at his enemy.

“Goddamn you, Smoke Jensen. You’ll pay for ruining me.”

His first shot slammed into the thick, wide leather cartridge belt at the small of Smoke’s back. It failed to penetrate, though it staggered the gunfighter. Yet, Smoke managed to turn and face his assailant. Buckner’s second bullet cut a hole, front to rear, through the fleshy part of Smoke’s right side. Its impact coincided with the discharge of the Colt in the hand of Smoke Jensen.

Put well off course, the slug went low and smashed the right hip joint of Olin Buckner. Dizzied by earlier wounds, Smoke Jensen stumbled across the room and kicked the now-useless pistol from the hand of its owner. Then he sat heavily in a chair, blood streaming from his side, and waited for someone to come.

It was the same when he faced Ralph Tinsdale…. Smoke Jensen had been a friend of Harrison Tate for over twenty years when he received a telegram at the Sugarloaf from Harrison’s wife, Martha. Had Smoke dwelled in one of the glittery cities of the East, or even in Denver, his message would have come with a black border. Harrison had died three days earlier, ridden down by a runaway carriage. The driver had not been caught. Saddened by the loss of a good friend, Smoke and Sally Jensen made ready at once to take the train from Big Rock to Denver to attend the funeral.

When they arrived, Smoke found the circumstances relating to the death of Harry Tate a bit like over-ripe fish. He also became embroiled in a minor scuffle after the funeral, at the grave-side service. A scruffy-looking individual approached Martha, demanding to speak with her immediately. He was, he claimed, an attorney, representing a client who absolutely insisted that Martha sell some property to him.

Rude to the point of disgust, the lawyer kept a bland expression as he pushed his cause. Boorishly, he shoved the papers into the face of the grieving widow. Only the heavy veil that covered her face prevented him from actually striking her. Sally Jensen put one arm protectively around the shoulders of Martha Tate.

“You do not understand, madam. Women cannot inherit property in their own right. You have no children, so you may retain possession of your husband’s property for so long as it takes to dispose of it. The sooner, the better.”

His untimely and unseemly intrusion sent flashes of memory through Smoke Jensen. In an instant he recalled the pressure brought against the merchant in Montana. This sounded too much like that to ignore. Smoke moved forward as the cad shoved the papers forward again.

Smoke planted a big, hard hand on the nearest shoulder of the shyster and bore down with hard fingers. “Back off, buster,” the lawyer said from the side of his mouth.

Smoke swung him with such force his hat spun away and his longish hair swung in the breeze. Smoke planted his other fist solidly against the still-flapping lips, painfully stilling them, and depositing the lout on his butt in the rain-wet grass. Smoke spoke softly, yet each word bore the weight of menace. “Now that I have your attention, listen good. The lady has just buried her husband. Kindly have the decency to allow a proper period of mourning. And, while we’re at it, kindly haul your despicable carcass out of here this instant.”

Shaken, the attorney cut his eyes from Smoke to the widow, then back again. “I don’t know who you think you are….” he began to bluster.

“Oh, I know quite well who I am. My name is Smoke Jensen.”

Instantly the lawyer turned the ashen color of the already dead, a greenish tinge ringed his fat, greedy, now-trembling lips.
Everyone
had heard of Smoke Jensen. Shakily, he scrambled to the soles of his patent leather button shoes and made a hasty retreat, frequently pausing to glance nervously behind him. A fresh shower slanted through the limbless trees and cold fall rain made a damp ruin of the papers clutched in one of his hands. Later he was to find out that his client Ralph Tinsdale had not heard of Smoke Jensen, and didn’t care to be advised about the subject. They both lived to regret that.

Over the next five days, Ralph Tinsdale resorted to other, more vicious means of enforcing his will on the Widow Tate. Tinsdale absolutely had to gain title to a choice, highly valuable square block in the center of downtown Denver. He desperately needed it to complete a land development scheme which would make him unbelievably wealthy, with more money than he could spend in three lifetimes. Two nights later, the carriage house behind the Tate mansion on Nob Hill caught afire. Two horses died, and a third was so badly burned that it had to be put down. The next day, Martha Tate found her beloved pet cat poisoned on the back porch. Crushed anew by this added grief, Martha retreated to her sitting room, to be consoled by Sally, while Smoke attended to affairs.

At the local police precinct, Smoke quickly found that the captain and most of his men resided solidly in the hip pocket of the as-yet unnamed speculator. The reception Smoke received when he went to file a complaint on Martha’s behalf was cool enough to form frost.

“Accidents do happen, Mr. Jensen,” the captain said airily. Then his obvious envy turned his coolness to arctic ice. “Even to the filthy rich.”

Smoke could not believe what he had heard. “Are you saying that you are not even going to investigate this?”

“I see no real need.”

Ire bubbled up in Smoke Jensen as he rose and leaned menacingly over the captain’s desk.
“I do,”
he growled harshly. “If you are going to ignore this, then I’m sure not. I’ll look into it on my own.”

Steel glinted in the flinty gray eyes of the lawman. “You do and I’ll have you behind bars for obstructing justice, interfering in a police investigation, and everything short of mopery.”

“How could my investigation interfere with something that is obviously being so ill-served? Suppose you tell me, how can I interfere with an investigation that is not being made?” Smoke stopped suddenly, recalled an offer that had been made to him a year ago by another better lawman than this travesty. “I’ll be back here, right enough. Only not to go to jail, but to watch you eat a large helping of crow.” With that he swarmed out of the office.

Two hours later, a sheepish desk sergeant knocked on the door to the captain’s office. “Uh—Boss, there’s a United States Marshal out here, wants to talk to you. He’s—ah—been here before.”

“Oh, hell, I was about to leave for the day and head for Lulu’s place. Send him in,” he concluded, sighing.

Smoke Jensen entered the office and the captain’s jaw sagged. “Deputy United States Marshal, Kirby Jensen, Captain. I’m here to advise you that I will be conducting an investigation into the cause of death of Harrison Tate, and the attempted extortion and intimidation of a widowed woman by the name of Martha Tate. Neither you nor your men will be required to participate. But I will expect your complete cooperation. Which boils down to this,” Smoke added with a blooming smile. “Keep the hell out of my way.”

Smoke had left the precinct station and gone directly to the office of the district U.S. Marshal in Denver. An old friend, Marshal Slator, had first offered Smoke Jensen a permanent deputy’s badge some five years earlier when Smoke had aided the lawman in clearing out a nest of highwaymen who had plagued the gold fields and storage houses of Colorado. Smoke declined at the time. Slator made the offer again a year gone by. Smoke soon found that it didn’t take more than ten words to find the silver circle pinned on his vest under his suit coat. Grinning, he then returned to the police station.

Shaken, the captain began to babble. “How—where—what in the name of God did you do to get that badge?”

“Accepted an old offer from a friend,” Smoke answered factually. “Now, can we begin again? I want the names of any known arsonists believed to operate in this district. Also the names of animal haters. I also want a trace put on the carriage that ran down Harrison Tate. Where did it go? Who owns it? Where is it now? Who drove it the day Harry was killed?”

“You sure want a whole lot for a man who was in here not two hours ago begging me to look into some old lady’s cat being poisoned.”

Smoke gave him a nasty smile. “Why, Captain, I’ve only begun.”

That night, three window panes were shot out of the second-floor front of the Tate mansion. That proved an immediate mistake. Smoke Jensen seemed to appear out of nowhere while the two, laughing, drunken men who had fired the shots staggered off down the flagstone walk. Each felt a light touch on one side of their heads an instant before their noggins were painfully slammed together.

Although dazed, one of them had the forethought to go for his six-gun, only to feel the muzzle of a .45 Colt Peacemaker, jammed into his stomach, and fired. The hot gasses blew through his intestines and did more damage than the slug. It reduced him to a writhing ball of misery. Beside him, his stunned companion gaped.

“Aw, God, Petey—Petey,” he croaked brokenly. “What happened to you?”

A hard, square-jawed face swam into his view.
“I
happened to him,” Smoke Jensen informed the piece of riffraff. “If you are not ready for some of the same, you’ll be quick about answering some questions.”

“Li—like what?”

“Who hired you to shoot up that house back there?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the suddenly white-faced punk blurted.

Smoke Jensen showed the drunken lout the blood-spattered muzzle of his Peacemaker and tapped him on his belly. “Yes, you do.”

Eyes grown wide and white, the words tumbled out. “I don’t know. Some feller we ran into down at Mulrooney’s.”

“If you don’t have a name, what did he look like?”

Eyes fixed on the threatening barrel of Smoke’s revolver, the thug gave a description through trembling lips. It matched that of the discourteous lawyer at the funeral. Then he concluded with, “He offered a lot of money. A whole hundred dollars.”

“Did he pay you in advance?”

“No. He said to look him u-up!”

“So you have an address. Give it.”

Twenty minutes later, Smoke Jensen had the punk locked up and the corpse on the way to the morgue. With that out of the way, he summoned a horse-drawn cab and returned to the Tate mansion. In the morning he would pay a visit at the address he had obtained.

Ten minutes past nine, the next morning, Smoke Jensen let himself into the reception area of an elegant office suite in a five-story brick building on Boyle Street. The view from the top-floor windows gave out onto San Francisco Bay. The calm waters, Smoke noticed, wore a plethora of steam ships, their funnels belching black streams, moved majestically through the gaggle of white dots from sail craft of varying size. Smoke knew that there existed rules of the road, so to speak, for vessels on the water, but to him all that bustle appeared to be some sort of mystical dance. At a desk, set behind a dividing rail and forbidding, low gate, sat a prim, pinched-faced young man.

He wore a high, celluloid collar, and an expression of disdain. He had removed his coat, to reveal a snowy shirt, off-set by a florid cravat that seemed to bloom up under his chin. The fellow peered at Smoke through the lenses of a pince-nez and further pursed his already puckered lips. A brass nameplate on the leading edge of the desk declared the individual to be Jerome Wimple.

“May I help you, sir?”

“Yes,” Smoke answered bluntly. “Who or what is Tinsdale Properties, Limited?” Smoke had obtained the name from the gold leaf letters on the frosted glass of the outer door.

The priggish secretary glanced around the outer room, at the potted plants, long burgundy drapes, dark wainscotting, and starkly white painted walls, as though to determine the answer to that question for himself. He sighed, as though loath to speak, and raised a narrow hand, with long, pallid fingers in a gesture of dismissal.

“We deal in real estate. Do you wish to list a property with us or are you looking to buy?”

“Neither one. I’m looking for a man who is supposed to work here.”

Wimple’s expression indicated that he had immediately lost interest, yet his position compelled him to continue this profitless course. “I am familiar with all of our employees. If you can give me his name, I’ll be able to direct you to him.”

Smoke hesitated a moment. “I don’t have a name. Only what he looks like. He’s about my height, heavier, maybe two hundred pounds, thick, black hair, a scar under his right eye, sort of red-faced, like a drinking man. Wears a large mustache, which he waxes and curves up the ends.”

Oh, dear heavens, Brian Trask!
Jerome Wimple blanched for only a fraction of a second, duly recorded by Smoke Jensen.

“I can think of no one of that description working for Tinsdale Limited.”

Smoke Jensen took a menacing step toward the desk. “Oh, really? If I were to bounce you off a couple of walls, do you think it would improve your memory?”

Panic put a squeak in Wimple’s voice. “You can’t do that! Please leave or I shall be compelled to summon the police.”

Smoke had reached the desk. With one big, hard hand, he bunched the front of the starched white shirt of Wimple and yanked him off his swivel chair. With the other he delved into his coat pocket and produced the U.S. Marshal’s badge.

“I
am
the police. United States Marshal. If I cannot get any satisfaction out of you, I’ll speak to Mr. Tinsdale.”

“M-Mr. Tinsdale is no—not in at the present time,” Wimple stammered, consumed with sudden fright.
What would Bruce say about this?
he wondered. This would never do. Jerome Wimple found himself suddenly released. His rump hit the seat of his chair with a soft splat.

“Then I’ll be back.” Smoke Jensen turned on one boot heel and stalked from the office.

Down on the ground floor, Smoke started out the tall front double doors when a man entering brushed him rudely aside and passed on for the stairs. Smoke caught only a quick glance. About his size, florid complexion, bulbous nose, black hair, a surly sneer on his face. Smoke had walked across the small stoop and down the five marble steps to street level before he realized who he had just seen.

At once, he swung about and started back into the tall, brick structure. Smoke took the stairs up to the fifth landing two at a time. Quickly, he strode down the carpeted hallway to the door of Tinsdale Properties, Limited. Without a pause, he yanked open the door and stormed down on the startled Jerome Wimple.

“Where is he?” Smoke demanded.

“Where is who—er—whom?” Wimple bleated.

Smoke Jensen bent closer. “The man I just described to you passed me in the lobby downstairs. He had to be coming here. I want to see him now.”

“You must be mistaken, Marshal. There’s no one come in here since you left.”

“If you are lying to me, you’ll find yourself in a cell with some mighty tough customers. I guarantee you that you’ll not like it.”