The Last Mountain Man Read online

  “I ought to run you both out of this town.”

  “Why?” Smoke asked. “On what charge? We haven’t caused you any trouble.”

  “Yet.” The sheriff’s back was stiff with anger as he strode away. The man knew a setup when he saw one, and this was a setup.

  But his feelings were mixed. He owed Ackerman and his bunch of rowdies nothing—they were all troublemakers. Ackerman swung no wide political loop in this country. And there were persistent rumors that Ackerman had been a thief and a murderer during the war—and a deserter. And the sheriff could not abide a coward.

  But, he sighed, if he was reading this young man called Smoke right, Ackerman’s future looked very bleak.

  A hard-ridden horse hammered the street into dust. A hand from the Bar-X slid to a halt. “Ackerman and his bunch are ridin’ in, sheriff,” the cowhand panted. “They’re huntin’ bear. Told me to tell you he’s gonna kill this kid called Smoke—and anyone else that got in his way.”

  The sheriff’s smile was grudgingly filled with admiration. The kid’s patience had paid off. Ackerman had made his boast and his threat; anything the kid did now could only be called self-defense.

  The sheriff thanked the cowboy and told him to hunt a hole. He crossed the street and told his deputy to clear the street in front of the hotel.

  In five minutes, the main street resembled a ghost town, with a yellow dog the only living thing that had not cleared out. Behind curtains, closed doors, and shuttered windows, men and women watched and waited, ears atune, anticipating the roar of gunfire from the street.

  At the edge of town, Ackerman, a bull of a man, with small, mean eyes and a cruel slit for a mouth, slowed his horse to a walk. Ackerman and his hands rode down the street, six abreast.

  Preacher and Smoke were on their feet. Preacher stuffed his mouth full of chewing tobacco. Both men had slipped the thongs from the hammers of their Colts. Preacher wore two Colts, .44s. One in a holster, the other stuck behind his belt. Mountain man and young gunfighter stood six feet apart on the boardwalk.

  The sheriff closed his office door and walked into the empty cell area. He sat down and began a game of checkers with his deputy.

  Ackerman and his men wheeled their horses to face the men on the boardwalk. “I hear tell you boys is lookin’ for me. If so, here I am.”

  “News to me,” Smoke said. “What’s your name?”

  “You know who I am, kid. Ackerman.”

  “Oh, yeah!” Smoke said. “You’re the man who helped kill my brother by shooting him in the back. Then you stole the gold he was guarding.”

  Inside the hotel, pressed against the wall, the desk clerk listened intently, his mouth open in anticipation of gunfire.

  “You’re a liar. I didn’t shoot your brother; that was Potter and his bunch.”

  “You stood and watched it. Then you stole the gold.”

  “It was war, kid.”

  “But you were on the same side,” Smoke said. “So that not only makes you a killer, it makes you a traitor and a coward.”

  “I’ll kill you for sayin’ that!”

  “You’ll burn in hell a long time before I’m dead,” Smoke told him.

  Ackerman grabbed for his pistol. The street exploded in gunfire and black powder fumes. Horses screamed and bucked in fear. One rider was thrown to the dust by his lunging mustang. Smoke took the men on the left, Preacher the men on the right side. The battle lasted no more than ten to twelve seconds. When the noise and the gunsmoke cleared, five men lay in the street, two of them dead. Two more would die from their wounds. One was shot in the side—he would live. Ackerman had been shot three times: once in the belly, once in the chest, and one ball had taken him in the side of the face as the muzzle of the .36 had lifted with each blast. Still Ackerman sat his saddle, dead. The big man finally leaned to one side and toppled from his horse, one boot hung in the stirrup. The horse shied, then began walking down the dusty street, dragging Ackerman, leaving a bloody trail.

  “I heard it all!” the excited desk clerk ran out the door. “You were in the right, Mr. Smoke. Yes, sir. Right all the way. Why . . . !” He looked at Smoke. “You’ve been wounded, sir.”

  A slug had nicked the young man on the cheek, another had punched a hole in the fleshy part of his left arm, high up. They were both minor wounds. Preacher had been grazed on the leg and a ricocheting slug had sent splinters into his face.

  Preacher spat into the street. “Damn near swallered my chaw.”

  “I never seen a draw that fast,” a man spoke from his store front. “It was a blur.”

  The sheriff and a deputy came out of the jail, walking down the bloody, dusty street. Both men carried Greeners: double-barreled twelve gauge shotguns.

  “Right down this street,” the sheriff said pointing, “is the doctor’s office. Get yourselves patched up and then get out of town. You have one hour.”

  “Sheriff, it was a fair fight,” the desk clerk said. “I seen it.”

  The sheriff never took his eyes off Smoke. “One hour,” he repeated.

  “We’ll be gone.” Smoke wiped a smear of blood from his cheek.

  Townspeople began hauling the bodies off. The local photographer set up his cumbersome equipment and began popping flash-powder, sealing the gruesomeness for posterity. He also took a picture of Smoke.

  The editor of the paper walked up to stand by the sheriff. He watched the old man and the young gun-hand walk down the street. He truly had seen it all. The old man had killed one man, wounded another. The young man had killed four men, as calmly as picking his teeth.

  “What’s that young man’s name?”

  “Smoke Jensen. But he’s a devil.”

  9

  There was a chill to the air when Smoke kicked off his blankets and rose to add twigs to the still smoldering coals. They were camped along the Arkansas, near Twin Lakes.

  “Cold,” Preacher complained, crawling out of his buffalo robe. “Can’t be far from Leadville.”

  “How do you figure that?” Smoke asked, slicing bacon into a pan and dumping a handful of coffee into the pot.

  “Coldest damn town in the whole country.” Preacher put on his hat then tugged on his boots. “I’ve knowed it to snow on the Fourth of July. So damned cold ifn a man dies in the winter, best thing to do is jist prop him up in a corner for the season. Ifn you wanna bury him, you gotta use dynamite to blast a hole in the ground. Tain’t worth the bother. And I ain’t lyin’, neither.”

  Smoke grinned and said nothing. He had long since ceased questioning the mountain man’s statements; upon investigation, they all proved out.

  “Them names on the list, Smoke. Any more of ’em in Colorado?”

  “Only one more, but we’ll let him be. He’s in the army up at Camp Collins. An officer. Took the name of a dead man who was killed in the first days of the war. I can’t fight the whole Yankee army.”

  “We goin’ back to the Hole?”

  “For the time being.”

  “Good. We’ll winter there. Stop along the way and pack in some grub.”

  * * *

  Major Powell and his detachment were gone when Preacher and Smoke reached the Hole in mid-September. Two horses were missing from the herd, and the money for them was in the cave. The soldiers had tended to the gardens, eating well from them. Emmett Jensen’s grave had been looked after. But the flowers were dying. Winter was not far off.

  The two men set about making the cabin snug against the winds that would soon howl cold through the canyon, roaring out of Wyoming, sighing off Diamond Peak. Preacher did a little trapping, for all the good it did him, and for awhile, the man called Smoke seemed to be at peace with himself.

  Preacher was surprised and embarrassed that Christmas morning to find a present for him when he awakened. He opened the box and aahed at the chiming railroad watch with a heavy gold fob.

  “That little watch and clock shop in Oreodelphia,” Preacher recalled. “Seen you goin’ in there.” He was sud
denly ill at ease. “But I dint get nothin’ for you.”

  “You’ve been giving me presents for years, Preacher. You’ve taught me the wilderness and how to survive. Just being with you has been the greatest present of my life.”

  Preacher looked at him. “Oh, hush up. You plumb sickenin’ when you try to be nice.” He wound the watch. “Reckon what time it is.” He turned his head so Smoke could not see the tears in his eyes.

  Smoke glanced outside. “’Bout seven, I reckon.”

  “That’s clost enough.” He set the watch and smiled as it chimed. “Purty. Best present I ever had.”

  “Oh, hush up.” Smoke smiled. “You plumb sickenin’ when you try to be nice.”

  * * *

  The winter wore on slowly in its cold, often white harshness. In the cabin, Preacher would sometimes sit and watch Smoke as he read and reread the few books in his possession, educating himself. He especially enjoyed the works of Shakespeare and Burns.

  And sometimes he would look at the paper from his father and from Gaultier. And Preacher knew in his heart, whether the young man would admit it or not, he would never rest until he had crossed out all the names.

  In the early spring of ’70, as the flowers struggled valiantly to push their colors to the warmth of the sun, Smoke began gathering his gear. Wordlessly, Preacher did the same.

  “Where we goin’ in such an all-fired hurry?” he asked Smoke.

  “I’ve heard you talk about the southwest part of this territory. You said it was pretty and lonely.”

  “’Tis.”

  “You know it well?”

  “I know the Delores, and the country thereabouts.”

  “Many people?”

  “Not to speak of.”

  “Be a good place to set up ranching, wouldn’t it?”

  “Ifn a man could keep his hair. That where we goin’?”

  “What is there to keep us here?”

  “Nothing a-tall.”

  * * *

  Pushing the herd of half-broken mustangs and Appaloosa, the two men headed south into the wild country, populated mainly by Ute, but with a scattering of Navajo and Piute. They crossed the Colorado River just east of what would later become Grand Junction, then cut southeast, keeping west of the Uncompahgre Plateau. Out of Unaweep Canyon, only a few miles from the Delores River, they began to smell the first bitter whiffs as the wind changed.

  Preacher brought them to a halt. While Smoke bunched the horses, Preacher stood up in his stirrups to sniff the air. “They’s more to it than wood. Sniff the air, son, tell me what you smell.”

  Smoke tried to identify the mixture of strange odors. Finally he said, “Leather. And cloth. And . . . something else I can’t figure out.”

  Preacher’s reply was grim. “I can. Burnin’ hair and flesh. You ’bout to come up on what an Injun leaves behind after an attack.” He pointed. “We’ll put the horses in that box canyon over yonder, then we’ll go take a look-see.”

  Securing the open end of the canyon with brush and rope, the men rode slowly and carefully toward the smell of charred flesh, the odor becoming thicker as they rode. At the base of a small hill, they left their horses and crawled up to the crest, looking down at the horror below.

  Tied by his ankles from a limb, head down over a small fire, a naked man trembled in the last moments of life. His head and face and shoulders were blackened cooked meat. The mutilated bodies of other men lay dead. One was tied to the wheel of the burned wagon. He had been tortured. All had died hard.

  “You said you heared gunfire ’bout two hours ago,” Preacher whispered. “You was right. Gawdamned ’Pache trick, that yonder is. They come up this far ever’ now and then, raidin’ the Utes.”

  “How did they get a wagon this far?” Smoke asked.

  “Sheer stubbornness. But I hope they weren’t no wimmin with ’em. If so, Gawd help ’em.”

  The men waited for more than an hour, moving only when necessary, talking in low tones.

  Finally, Preacher stirred. “They gone. Let’s go down and prowl some, give the people a Christian burial. Say a word or two.” He spat on the ground. “Gawddamned heathens.”

  Smoke found a shovel, handle intact, on the ground beside the charred wagon. He dug a long, shallow grave, burying the remains of the men in one common grave, covering the mound with rocks to keep wolves and coyotes from digging up the bodies and eating them.

  Preacher walked the area, cutting sign, trying to determine if anyone got away. Smoke rummaged through what was left of the wagon. He found what he didn’t want to find.

  “Preacher!”

  The mountain man turned. Smoke held up a dress he’d found in a trunk, then another dress, smaller than the first.

  Preacher shook his shaggy head as he walked. “Gawd have mercy on they souls,” he said, fingering the gingham. “Man’s a damned fool bringin’ wimminfolk out here.”

  “Maybe one of them got away?” Smoke said hopefully.

  “Tain’t likely. But we got to look.”

  Almost on the verge of giving up after an hour’s searching, Smoke made one more sweep of the area. Then he saw the faint shoeprints, mixed in with moccasin tracks. The prints were small; a child, or a woman.

  “Good Lord!” Preacher said. “Mayhaps she got clear and run away.” He circled the tracks until he got them separated. “Don’t see none followin’ her. Get the horses, son. We got to find her ’fore dark.”

  It did not take them long to track her. She was hiding behind some brush, at the mouth of a canyon. Movement of the brush gave her away.

  “Girl,” Preacher said, “you come on out, now. You ’mong friends.”

  Weeping was the only reply from behind the brush. Smoke could see one high-top button shoe. A dainty shoe.

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” he said.

  More weeping.

  “They’s a snake crawlin’ in there with you,” Preacher lied.

  A young woman bolted from behind the brush as if propelled from a cannon barrel, straight into the arms of Smoke. With all her softness pressing against him, she lifted her head and looked at him through eyes of light blue, a heart-shaped face framed with hair the color of wheat. They stood for several long heartbeats, gazing at each other, neither of them speaking.

  Preacher snorted. “This ain’t no place for romance. Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  * * *

  Preacher griped and groused, but the young woman insisted upon returning to where the members of her family were buried. She stood for a few moments, looking down at the long, narrow grave.

  “My aunt?” she questioned.

  “Looks like the savages took her,” Preacher said.

  “What will they do to her?”

  “Depends a lot on her. Was she a looker?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Was she a handsome woman?”

  “She was beautiful.”

  Preacher shrugged. “Then they’ll probably keep her.” He did not tell the young woman her aunt might have been—by now—raped repeatedly and then tortured to death. “They’ll work her hard, beat her some, but she’ll most probably be all right. Some buck with no squaw will bed her down. Then agin, they might trade her off for a horse or rifle.”

  “Or they might kill her?” she said.

  “Yep.”

  “You don’t believe I’ll ever see her again, do you?”

  “No, Missy, I don’t. It just ain’t likely. Down in Arizony Territory, back ’bout ’51 or ’52, I think it was, the Oatman family tried to cross the desert alone. The Yavapais kilt the parents and took the kids. A boy and two gals. The boy run off, one of the gals died. But Olive Oatman lived as a slave with the Injuns for years. They tattooed her chin ’fore she was finally traded off for goods. It’s bes’ to put your aunty out of your mind. I seen lots of white wimmin lived with Injuns for years; too ashamed to come back to they own kind even ifn they could.”

  The young woman was silent. />
  “What’s your name?” Smoke asked.

  “Nicole,” she said, then put her face in her small hands and began to weep. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have any family to go back to. I don’t have anyone.”

  Smoke put his arms around her. “Yes, you do, Nicole. You have us.”

  “Just call me Uncle Preacher,” the mountain man said. “Plumb disgustin’.”

  * * *

  Smoke rummaged around the still smoldering wagon, looking for any of Nicole’s clothing that might have escaped the flames. He found a few garments, including a lace-up corset, which she quickly snatched, red-faced, from him. He also found a saddle that had suffered only minor damage. Everything else was lost.

  “Now, how you figure she’s a-gonna sit that there saddle?” Preacher demanded. “What with all them skirts and petti-things underneath?”

  “She’s not. She found a pair of men’s trousers that belonged to her uncle. She can ride astraddle.”

  “That ain’t fittin’ for no decent woman. Ain’t nobody ’ ceptin’ a whore’ d do that!”

  “What the hell’d you wanna do? Build a travois and drag her?”

  Preacher walked away, muttering to himself.

  Nicole came to Smoke’s side. “I can sit a saddle. I rode as a child in Illinois.”

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  “No. I’m from Boston. After my parents died, when I was just a little girl, I came to Illinois to live with my uncle and aunt. What’s your name?”

  “Smoke. That’s Preacher.” He jerked his thumb.

  She smiled. She was beautiful. “Just Smoke?”

  “That’s what I’m called.”

  “At a trading post, we heard talk of a gunfighter called Smoke. Is that you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “They said you’d killed fifty men.” There was no fear in her eyes as she said it.

  Smoke laughed. “Hardly. A half dozen white men, maybe. But they were fair fights.”

  “You don’t look like a gunfighter.”

  “What does a gunfighter look like?”

  She smiled, white even teeth flashing against the tan of her face.

  “Carryin’ on like children at a box social,” Preacher muttered.