Terror of the Mountain Man

  TERROR OF THE MOUNTAIN MAN

  William W. Johnstone

  with J. A. Johnstone

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Epilogue

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  Copyright Page

  Notes

  Prologue

  Vallecillo, Nuevo Leon, Mexico

  The villagers were going about their daily business when Colonel Taurino Bustamante Keno and his Ejército Mexicano de la Liberación came riding in. There were more than fifty men riding in a precise military formation. Carrying rifles, and with bullet-filled bandoliers angled across their chest, they made quite an imposing and frightening sight.

  As they approached the town, playing children ran to their mothers, men working in the field hurried back to their wives, and the merchants locked their doors. The street emptied quickly so that the only living residents of the town to welcome them were the barking dogs that nipped at the heels of the horses.

  Keno fired his pistol into the air, several times.

  “Why do you run?” he shouted. “Los hombres de este pueblo! Come to the plaza del centro now! If the men do not come, I will send my soldiers to your houses, and we will kill the women and the children!”

  Gradually the men of the village began to come out, one at a time, until soon the town square was crowded with them. All were unarmed, and all were looking on, with fear, at Keno and his men.

  “There,” Keno said, a wide smile spreading across his face. “Now that you are here, I ask you for your help. We need money, so I am declaring a tax on this village. A tax often thousand pesos.”

  “Ten thousand pesos?” one of the men shouted. “This is a poor village. What makes you think we have ten thousand pesos?”

  “I know that you do,” Keno said. “And perhaps that is a great deal of money for you to raise. But we need it, you see. And I am sure that you would like to support the revolución popular.”

  “It is not a people’s revolution!” the same villager shouted. “We don’t want a revolution. The government does not send Federales here to steal from us. Only you, and your Mexican Army of Liberation does such a thing.”

  “I told you, amigo, this is a tax.”

  “If you have guns and you take money from us, it is not a tax. It is stealing!”

  Keno nodded at one of his men, and they shot the protesting villager down. The other villagers shouted out in shock and alarm.

  “Do you see what happens to traitors of the revolution?” Keno asked. “Now, please, raise the tax among you, as I have asked. Then, when that unpleasant business has been taken care of, we will barbeque goat, and have a fiesta.”

  For a moment longer the men just stood there, still transfixed by having seen one of their neighbors shot down so casually.

  “Hurry, my friends, do not make us wait!” Keno shouted with a wave of his arm. “Hurry!”

  As the villagers hurried to raise the money Keno had demanded, Keno and his men proceeded to the cantina. The cantina, like the other business establishments in town, had closed and locked the doors when the fifty or more bandidos rode into town. Finding the door locked, Keno signaled to a couple of men, and they broke through the door. With the door out of the way, the men rushed inside and began grabbing bottles of tequila and whiskey, and filling mugs with beer.

  “Where are the putas?” Keno shouted. “If the putas do not come, we will burn this place!”

  A few minutes later five very frightened prostitutes arrived.

  “You,” Keno said, pointing to the youngest and most attractive. “I will take you.”

  He went into the back with the young girl while his men made arrangements to share the remaining four.

  During the war with America, when Keno had been a very young man, his commanders learned quickly that he had courage, and would not hesitate to kill. He was given the mission of carrying on a deadly guerrilla warfare against the Americans in Texas, and he was most effective. Keno was a hero then, and all Mexicans honored and respected him.

  After that war he was given a commission by the Mexican government, and during the French intervention in Mexico, Keno, as he had in the Mexican-American War, fought well. He was present when Maximilian was executed, on June 19, 1867.

  After that war ended the other soldiers returned to ranching and farming, but Keno did not. He promoted himself to colonel, kept many of his soldiers with him, raised even more, and under the auspices of fighting a revolution for the people, instead began stealing from them. His military skills had not diminished, but now, instead of using them in service of his country, he was using them for his own enrichment and self-aggrandizement.

  Some of the men of the village held a meeting to try and determine what they should do.

  “We must do something,” the leader of the group said. “We are not animals, to be treated like sheep.”

  “What can we do, Orozco?” another asked.

  “Why do you ask, Rivas? Are you not a man? You know what we must do. We must fight them.”

  “We should go to the Federales,” another suggested.

  “We have gone to the Federales, Cruz, and what did it gain us?” Orozco asked. “We get nothing from them. There are only two of them. They can do nothing. We must fight him ourselves.”

  “And how shall we fight them, Orozco? They have guns and knives. We have we have scythes, and hoes,” Rivas insisted.

  “I don’t know,” Orozco admitted in frustration. “I don’t know.”

  Chapter One

  Southwest, Missouri—1882

  “We’re getting pretty close now,” Smoke said.

  Smoke and Sally had been two days on the train since leaving Sugarloaf Ranch at Big Rock, Colorado, and he was sitting in the window seat, looking out.

  “Do you see anything you recognize?” Sally asked.

  “Yeah,” Smoke replied. “I have been right here, on this creek, before.”

  “You sure it was this creek?” Sally teased. “We’ve seen at least a dozen or more creeks, streams, and rivers since we came into Missouri. Are you sure it’s this creek?”

  “I’m sure,” Smoke said, as he recalled the last time he had been at this same spot.

  Smoke could feel his stomach shaking from the shock waves of the explosion. The underpinnings of the trestle were carried away by the planted charges, but the superstructu
re remained intact for several more seconds, stretching across the creek with no visible means of support, as if defying the laws of gravity. Then, slowly, the tracks began to sag and the ties started snapping, popping with a series of loud reports, like pistol shots, until finally, with a resounding crash and a splash of water, the whole bridge collapsed into the creek.

  “Now, that’s the way to do it, boys,” Asa Briggs said with a broad, happy smile. “The Yankees won’t be movin’ troops over this railroad for a while.”

  It was just over twenty years ago when that trestle had been destroyed, one of the casualties of war. However, as the train passed over the creek on a rebuilt trestle, Smoke could remember the event as if it had been yesterday.

  Smoke was in Missouri for the first time since he and his father had left back in 1865. He and his father had left together, and now they were returning together. Smoke had exhumed his father’s grave, and Emmett Jensen’s remains were in a beautiful ebony and silver coffin in the baggage car ahead. Smoke was bringing him home, to Missouri, to be buried next to his mother.

  “It’s just something I want to do,” he had told Sally when he came up with the idea.

  “Then we shall do it.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we. I want to see where you were born, Smoke, and where you grew up.”

  “I didn’t grow up there that much. I left home when I was still no more than a boy.”

  Sally chuckled, and ran her hand through his hair. “What makes you think you’re grown up now?” she asked.

  “Why would I want to grow up?” Smoke teased. “The only thing that happens when you grow up is you get old.”

  The conductor came through the car then and stopping at the seat occupied by Smoke and Sally, leaned over to speak quietly.

  “There is a table available in the dining car now, Mr. Jensen. I’ve asked them to hold it for you.”

  “Thank you,” Smoke said, and he and Sally got up to walk back to the diner. They were met by a smiling porter, who escorted them to a table which was covered with white linen cloth and decorated by a vase of flowers. The menu displayed fare as varied as that found in the finest restaurants in the country. Darkness fell outside, a single candle lighting the distance between the couple.

  Sally reached across the table to lay her hand on Smoke’s hand.

  “I’m glad you’ve decided to do this,” she said. “I know that you have spoken about how you had to bury your mother.”

  “In a feeding trough,” Smoke said in shame and embarrassment. “I had to bury her in a feeding trough. But she’ll have a fine coffin now. I should have done this long ago, Sally. I should have moved Pa back to Missouri and put them down next to each other, years ago.”

  “It’s never too late,” Sally said.

  “I guess not,” Smoke said. “It isn’t as if they are aware that they had to wait so long.”

  After dinner they returned to the car, now brightly lit by the gimbal-mounted lamps between the windows.

  Sally began reading, while Smoke sat in musing silence, the darkness outside limiting his view to that of the golden squares of light which, projected through the windows, were sliding by at almost thirty miles an hour along the gravel ballast beside the tracks.

  Suddenly the train braked sharply, eventually grounding to a shuddering, screeching, banging halt.

  Curious as to why the train stopped so suddenly, Smoke looked out the window to see what he could determine. Because of the dark, he saw nothing.

  “What is going on? Why have we stopped?” someone asked.

  “I nearly broke my neck! The railroad is certainly going to hear from me!” another complained.

  “Smoke, what is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Smoke said. “Could be a break in the track. Could even be a train robbery.”

  “Surely not?”

  “Why not? We’re in Missouri, after all. And this is where Jesse James sort of perfected the operation.”

  “But Jesse James is dead.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Smoke said. He pulled his pistol from his holster, then let it rest on his knee, covered by his hat.

  No sooner had Smoke done that than a man burst into the car from the front. He wore a bandana tied across the bottom half of his face, and he held a pistol which he pointed toward the passengers on the car. “Everyone stay in their seats!” the armed man shouted.

  “Smoke!” Sally said.

  “Ever’body get their money out. We’re goin’ to have us a collection, you know, like what happens in a church?” The gunman laughed. “You just do what I tell you to do, and there won’t nobody get hurt,” the gunman shouted.

  “Except you,” Smoke replied.

  “What did you say?”

  “You will be hurt, if you don’t step off this train now, and go on your way,” Smoke said calmly.

  “Mister, are you crazy? You do see that I’m holdin’ a gun here, don’t you?”

  “In fact, I do see it,” Smoke said. “But it isn’t going to do you any good. Now put the gun away and leave the train.”

  “Yeah? An’ if I don’t?”

  “I’ll kill you,” Smoke said.

  “Abner, I think maybe you’d better get in here,” the gunman called.

  Another gunman stepped in, to join the first. “What do you need?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

  “You see that feller down there, about halfway on the right?” The gunman chuckled. “He just told me that if I don’t get off the train now, he’s goin’ to kill me.”

  Smoke continued to sit quietly in his seat, fixing an unblinking stare on the two men who were standing at the front of the car.

  “Is that right, mister? Is that what you said?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Lady, maybe you’d better find somewhere else in this car to sit,” Abner said to Sally.

  “Why?” Sally asked.

  “Why? ’Cause we’re about to shoot that fella you’re sittin’ beside, ’n’ it would be a downright shame if you was to get hit when we start shootin’.”

  “He’s my husband, and I have no intention of moving. Besides, you won’t be shooting.”

  “We’re not foolin’, lady. Do you think we won’t shoot?”

  “Oh, I think you’ll make the attempt, but your effort will be unsuccessful.”

  Sally’s cool, and unflappable comments, spoken without the slightest indication of fear, or even anxiousness, shocked the other passengers in the car, and had a very unnerving effect on the two men.

  “What the hell, let’s just shoot both of them,” Abner said. He and the other gunman, who had been addressed as James, both raised their guns to fire, pulling the hammers back as they did so.

  Two shots rang out, but the shots didn’t come from the train robbers’ guns. Instead they came from Smoke, who had lifted his pistol from his lap and fired twice before either of the outlaws could get even one shot off.

  During the gunfire, women screamed and men shouted. As the car filled with the gun smoke of the two discharges, Smoke jumped up and ran out through the back door of the car. Leaping from the steps down to the ground, he fell and rolled away from the train, out into the darkness.

  “Abner! James! What’s goin’ on in there?” someone called. “What’s all the shootin’?”

  In the dim light that spilled through the car windows, Smoke saw the gunman who was yelling at the others. As he ran through the little golden patches of light cast by the windows of the cars, it had the effect of a lantern blinking on and off so that first he was in shadow, then brightly illuminated . . . then shadow . . . then illuminated. Smoke waited.

  “Hold it right there!” Smoke shouted. “I’ve got you covered. Put down your gun and throw up your hands.”

  “The hell you do,” the gunman shouted. Realizing that he was illuminated by light shining from the train car, he moved out into the shadow to fire at Smoke, or at least, where he thought Smoke might be.

  Smoke u
sed the flame pattern to return fire. He heard the gunman let out a little yell, and he knew he had hit him. He got up, then ran quickly through the dark toward him, his gun at the ready.

  His caution wasn’t necessary. The man was lying on the ground, dead.

  The immediate danger seemed to be over, and as far as he knew, the three men he shot had been the only ones involved.

  After another moment the conductor left the train and was soon joined by a few of the braver passengers. By now even the engineer, fireman, and the messenger had come down and the train crew and passengers stood around the body that lay belly-down alongside the train.

  “There are two more dead inside, besides this one out here. Any others that you know of?” the conductor asked the engineer.

  “No,” the engineer replied. “They was only three of ’em what stopped me, ’n’ if you say they’s two more of ’em inside, well, that would be all of ’em.”

  “Did they get anything?” one of the passengers asked the messenger, who had come down from the express car.

  “No, they didn’t get that far. The shooting started before I opened the door, and the next thing you know, they were gone.”

  “Who was it that done all the shootin’?” the engineer asked.

  “It was him,” one of the passengers said accusingly, pointing at Smoke. “And, if you ask me, it was damn foolish of him to do it too. They was women and children in that car, ’n’ with all the bullets flyin’ around, why it’s a wonder there wasn’t some of ’em hit.”

  “There were only two bullets,” Smoke said. “And they weren’t flying around. They hit exactly what they were supposed to hit.”

  “Why did you start shooting?” the conductor asked.

  “Because they were about to shoot me,” Smoke answered.

  “So you say. I’m not so sure about that,” the conductor said.

  “Well, I’m sure, because I saw it,” one of the other passengers said. “The two brigands in the car pointed their pistols at this gentleman, and announced quite clearly for all concerned, that it was their intention to shoot not only him, but his wife as well.”