Trail of the Mountain Man

“Your boss has made his boast that he'll run me off my land. He's said he'll take my wife. But he won't face me alone. He'll send his riders to do the job. So if any of you have a mind to open the dance, let's strike up the band, boys.”

Red jerked out his pistol. Smoke let him clear leather before he drew his right-hand Colt. He drew, cocked, and fired in one blindingly fast motion. The .44 slug hit Red square between his eyes and blew out the back of his head, the force of the .44 slug slamming the TF rider backward to land in a sprawl of dead, cooling meat some distance away from the table.

Smoke holstered his .44 in a move almost as fast as his draw. “Anybody else want to dance?” he said, smiling.

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Table of Contents

— Elmer Davis

 

 

— Anonymous

As gold strikes go, this particular strike was nothing to really shout about. Oh, a lot of the precious metal was dug out, chipped free, and blasted from the earth and rock, but the mines would play out in just over a year. The town of Fontana would wither and fade from the Western scene a couple of years later.

But with the discovery of gold, a great many lives would be forever changed. Livelihoods and relationships were altered; fortunes were made and lost; lives were snuffed out and families split, with the only motive greed.

Thus Fontana was conceived only to die an unnatural death.

 

 

Dawn was breaking as the man stepped out of the cabin. He held a steaming cup of coffee in one large, callused hand. He was tall, with wide shoulders and the lean hips of the horseman. His hair was ash-blond, cropped short, and his eyes were a cold brown, rarely giving away any inner thought.

The cabin had been built well, of stone and logs. The floor was wood. The windows held real glass. The cabin had been built to last, with a hand pump in the kitchen to bring up the water. There were curtains on the windows. The table and chairs and benches were hand-made and carved; done with patience and love.

And all about the house, inside and out, were the signs of a woman's touch.

Flowers and blooming shrubs were in colored profusion. The area around the house was trimmed and swept. Neat.

It was a high-up and lonely place, many miles from the nearest town. Below the cabin lay a valley, five miles wide and as many miles long. The land was filed on and claimed and legal with the Government. It belonged to the man and his wife.

They had lived here for three years, hacking a home out of the high, lonesome wilderness. Building a future. In another year they planned on building a family. If all stayed according to plan, that is.

The man and wife had a couple hundred head of cattle, a respectable herd of horses. They worked a large garden, canning much of what they raised for the hard winters that lashed the high country.

The man and woman stayed to themselves, socializing very little. When they did visit, it was not to the home of the kingpin who claimed to run the entire area, Tilden Franklin. Rather it was to the small farmers and ranchers who dotted the country that lay beneath the high lonesome where the man and woman lived.

There was a no-name town that was exclusively owned by Tilden Franklin. The town held a large general store, two saloons, a livery stable, and a gunsmith.

But all that was about to change.

Abruptly.

This was a land of towering mountains and lush, green valleys, sparsely populated, and it took a special breed of men and women to endure.

Many could not cope with the harshness, and they either moved on or went back to where they came from.

Those that stayed were the hardy breed.

Like Matt and Sally.

Matt was not his real name. He had not been called by his real name for so many years he never thought of it. There were those who could look at him and tell what he had once been; but this was the West, and what a man had once been did not matter. What mattered was what he was now. And all who knew Matt knew him to be a man you could ride the river with.

He had been a gunfighter. But now he rarely buckled on a short gun. Matt was not yet thirty years old and could not tell you how many men he had killed. Fifty, seventy-five, a hundred. He didn't know. And neither did anyone else.

He had been a gunfighter, and yet had never hired out his gun. Had never killed for pleasure. His reputation had come to him as naturally as his snake-like swiftness with a short gun.

He had come West with his father, and they had teamed up with an old Mountain Man named Preacher. And the Mountain Man had taken the boy in tow and begun teaching him the way of the mountains: how to survive, how to be a man, how to live where others would die.

Preacher had been present when the boy killed his first man during an Indian attack. The old Mountain Man had seen to the boy after the boy's dying father had left his son in his care. Preacher had seen to the boy's last formative years. And the old Mountain Man had known that he rode with a natural gun slick.
¹

It was Preacher who gave the boy the name that would become legend throughout the West; the name that would be whispered around ten thousand campfires and spoken of in a thousand saloons; the name that would be spoken with the same awe as that of Bat Masterson, Ben Thompson, the Earp boys, Curly Bill.

Smoke.

Smoke's first wife had been raped and murdered, their baby son killed. Smoke had killed them all, then ridden into the town owned by the men who had sent the outlaws out and killed those men and wiped the town from the face of Idaho history.
²

Smoke Jensen then did two things, one of them voluntarily. He became the most feared man in all the West, and he dropped out of sight. And then, shortly after dropping out of sight, he married Sally.

But his disappearance did nothing to slow the rumors about him; indeed, if anything, the rumors built in flavor and fever.

Smoke had been seen in Northern California. Smoke had gunned down five outlaws in Oregon. Smoke had cleaned up a town in Nevada. Since his disappearance, Smoke, so the rumors went, had done this and that and the other thing.

In reality, Smoke had not fired a gun in anger in three years.

But all that was about to change.

A dark-haired, hazel-eyed, shapely woman stepped out of the cabin to stand by her man's side. Something was troubling him, and she did not know what. But he would tell her in time.

This man and wife kept no secrets from each other. Their lives were shared in all things. No decisions were made by one without consulting the other.

“More coffee?” she asked.

“No, thank you. Trouble coming,” he said abruptly. “I feel it in my gut.”

A touch of panic washed over her. “Will we have to leave here?”

Smoke tossed the dregs of his coffee to the ground. “When hell freezes over. This is our land, our home. We built it, and we're staying.”

“How do the others feel?”

“Haven't talked to them. Think I might do that today. You need anything from town?”

“No.”

“You want to come along?”

She smiled and shook her head. “I have so much to do around the house. You go.”

“It'll be noon tomorrow before I can get back,” he reminded her.

“I'll be all right.”

He was known as Matt in this part of Colorado, but at home Sally always called him Smoke. “I'll pack you some food, Smoke.”

He nodded his head. “I'll saddle up.”

He saddled an appaloosa, a tough mountain horse, sired by his old appaloosa, Seven, who now ran wild and free on the range in the valley Smoke and Sally claimed.

Back in the snug cabin, Smoke pulled a trunk out of a closet and opened the lid. He was conscious of Sally's eyes on him as he removed his matched 44's and laid them to one side. He removed the rubbed and oiled gun belts and laid them beside the deadly colts.

“It's come to that, Smoke?” she asked.

He sighed, squatting before the trunk. He removed several boxes of .44 ammo. “I don't know.” His words were softly spoken. “But Franklin is throwing a big loop nowadays. And wants it bigger still. I was up on the Cimarron the other day — I didn't tell you 'cause I didn't want you to worry. I made sign with some Indians. Sally, it's gold.”

She closed the trunk lid and sat down, facing her husband. “Here? In this area?”

“Yes. Hook Nose, the buck that spoke English, told me that many whites are coming. Like ants toward honey was his words. If it's true, Sally, it's trouble. You know Franklin claims more than a hundred and fifty thousand acres as his own. And he's always wanted this valley of ours. It's surprising to me that he hasn't made a move to take it.”

Money did not impress Sally. She was a young, high-spirited woman with wealth of her own. Old money, from back in New Hampshire. In all probability, she could have bought out Tilden Franklin's holdings and still had money.

“You knew about the gold all along, didn't you, Smoke?”

“Yes,” he told her. “But I don't think it's a big vein. I found part of the broken vein first year we were here. I don't want it.”

“We certainly don't need the money,” she reminded him.

Smoke gave her one of his rare smiles, the smile softening his face and mellowing his eyes, taking years from the young man's face. “That's right. I keep forgetting I married me a rich lady.”

Together, they laughed.

Her laughter sobered as he began filling the cartridge loops with .44 rounds.

“Does part of it run through our land, Smoke?”

“Yes.”

“I'll pack you extra food. I think you're going to be gone longer than you think.”

“I think you're probably right. Sally? You know you have nothing to fear from the Indians. They knew Preacher and know he helped raise me. It's the white men you have to be careful of. It would take a very foolish man to bother a woman out here, but it's happened. Stay close to the house. The horses will warn you if anyone's coming. Go armed at all times. Hear me?”

“Yes, Smoke.”

He leaned forward and kissed her mouth. “I taught you to shoot, and know you can. Don't hesitate to do so. The pot is boiling, Sally. We're going to have gold-hunters coming up against Franklin's gunhands. When Franklin learns of the gold, he's going to want it all. Our little no-name town is going to boom. For a time. Trouble is riding our way on a horse out of Hell. You've never seen a boom town, Sally. I have. They're rough and mean and totally violent. They attract the good and the bad. Especially the bad. Gamblers and gunhawks and thieves and whores. We're all going to be in for a rough time of it for a while.”

“We've been through some rough times before, Smoke,” she said quietly.

“Not like this.” He stood up, belted the familiar Colts around his lean waist, and began loading the .44's.

“Matt just died, didn't he?” she asked.

“Yes. I'm afraid so. When Smoke steps out of the shadows, Sally — and it's time, for I'm tired of being someone else — bounty-hunters and kids with dreams of being the man who killed Smoke Jensen will be coming in with the rest of the trash and troublemakers. Sally, I've never been ashamed of what I was. I hunted down and destroyed those who ripped my life to shreds. I did what the law could not or would not do. I did what any real man would have done. I'm a Mountain Man, Sally. Perhaps the last of the breed. But that's what I am.

“I'm not running anymore, Sally. I want to live in peace. But if I have to fight to attain that peace . . . so be it. And,” he said with a sigh, “I might as well level with you. Peyton told me last month that Franklin has made his boast about running us out of this valley.”

“His wife told me, Smoke.”

The young man with the hard eyes smiled. “I might have known.”

She drew herself up on tiptoes and kissed him. “See you in two or three days, Smoke.”