Trek of the Mountain Man Read online

  “But we’ll freeze to death up there,” Kane pleaded.

  Smoke shrugged. “At least you’ll have a chance to live. That’s more than you gave the men you killed at my ranch.”

  He turned to Pearlie. “Put them on your horse. I’ll take them a couple of miles up the mountain and then I’ll meet you back here.”

  Pearlie put his skinning knife away and walked over to where the two men were propped up against a boulder. He bent over to reach down and help Billy Gatsby to his feet. Billy moaned and spat out some blood from his mouth as Pearlie grabbed him under the arms.

  Just as Pearlie straightened up with the young man in his arms, Sam Kane jumped to his feet, drawing a long knife with a skinny blade from his boot. He threw his left arm around Pearlie’s face and stuck the point of the knife up against his throat, whirling around until he was facing Smoke and Cal.

  Billy tried to grin but stopped when he realized it hurt too much. He reached down and pulled Pearlie’s pistol from his holster and stood next to them, pointing the gun at Cal and Smoke.

  Smoke sighed, squaring his body so he was facing the two men full on. “Are you boys sure you want to play it out this way?” Smoke asked.

  “We ain’t got no choice, Jensen,” Zane said. “I can’t let you take us up into the mountains to freeze to death or to be eaten by wild animals.”

  Smoke nodded. “I guess you’re right, son,” he said. “It might be more humane to just kill you both now, so you’ll die quick and easy.”

  Zane grinned nastily. “I think you’re forgetting who has the upper hand here, Jensen.”

  Billy mumbled something through his ruined mouth that sounded like “Yeah.”

  Smoke shrugged and glanced at Cal, who nodded grimly.

  Quick as a rattlesnake striking, Smoke and Cal drew their pistols and fired, Cal’s shot coming an instant later than Smoke’s.

  A tiny hole appeared in Zane’s forehead from the slug Smoke fired, whipping his head back and flinging him spread-eagled on his back across the boulder behind him and Pearlie.

  Cal’s slug took Billy in the neck, snapping it and almost taking his head off before he crumpled to the ground, dead in his boots.

  Pearlie reached up and fingered the thin red line on his throat where Zane’s knife slid across it after he’d been hit. Pearlie smiled. “I thought you boys was gonna jaw all night ’fore you took them pond scum out.”

  He glanced down at Billy, noted the wound in his neck, and then he looked back over at Cal. “You a mite off on your aim there, Cal boy. Guess we’re gonna have to see that you practice a bit more in the future.”

  Cal smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I was aiming for his heart, but I guess I rushed the shot a little since he already had his gun drawn and pointed.”

  Smoke holstered his pistol. “You did mighty good, Cal, especially in knowing I wanted you to take the one with the gun instead of the one with the knife.”

  “Yeah,” Pearlie said, a puzzled look on his face. “I didn’t see you pass no signals, so how’d you know which one to shoot, Cal?”

  Cal spun his gun once and let it drop into his holster. “I knew Smoke would take the harder shot, so I took the easier one.” He smiled at Cal. “Besides, I didn’t want to risk hitting you ’stead of that bastard there, ’cause I knew I’d never hear the end of it if I did.”

  Pearlie and Smoke both laughed. “You got that right,” Pearlie agreed.

  Smoke pulled out the large bowie knife he carried in a scabbard on his belt and walked over to the dead bodies. “I think we ought to leave a little message for Mr. Pike now that these boys have forced our hand.”

  16

  Bill Pike woke up just as the morning sun was peeking over the mountain peaks to the east. He yawned and stretched and climbed out of his blankets, noticing the fire had burned down to just coals.

  He walked over to the bundle of blankets that covered Rufus Gordon and kicked it with his boot. “Rufus, wake your lazy ass up and put some wood on that fire,” he said.

  Rufus groaned. “Aw, Bill, you know I can’t hardly use my right hand. Get somebody else to do it.”

  Pike looked surprised. “I thought that doc over in Canyon City fixed your hand up pretty good.”

  Rufus held up his right hand, totally encased in new bandages. “He did, but the damn thing’s so wrapped up I can’t use my fingers.”

  “Must make pickin’ your nose a real chore,” Hank Snow called from across the fire, laughing at his own joke.

  “Glad you spoke up, Hank,” Bill Pike said, turning to him. “Just for that, you can get the wood for the fire ’stead of Rufe.”

  As Snow got slowly to his feet, grumbling about no one having a sense of humor, Pike nudged Blackie Johnson with his boot. “Blackie, get up and fix us some coffee and breakfast ’fore it’s time for lunch.”

  While Hank Snow got the fire going, Blackie pulled the cooking utensils out of the bag on the back of one of the packhorses and began to make coffee and prepared to fry some bacon and boil some beans. He still had some biscuits he’d cooked the night before, and put them on a pan near the fire to warm up.

  The rest of the gang began to get their blankets and groundsheets folded and packed on their horses. Sally sat up in her blankets and held up her hand with the rope still tied to it. “If you’ll take this off,” she said to Pike, “I’ll put my blankets on my horse.”

  Pike walked over, squatted down, and untied the knots in the rope. “Did you sleep well, Mrs. Jensen?” he asked, a slight smile on his face.

  “Yes, thank you, Mr. Pike,” she answered. “But I’ll feel a lot better after some coffee.”

  Pike looked over at Blackie. “That coffee ready yet, Blackie?”

  Blackie nodded, poured some into a tin mug, and brought it over to Sally. “I’ll have some biscuits and bacon and beans ready in about five minutes, Mrs. Jensen,” he said, his eyes narrowing at the red rash the rope had made on her wrist. “And I’ll get you some lard to smooth on that rash on your wrist.”

  Pike scowled at Johnson. “Don’t go gettin’ too kindly to the lady, Blackie. It ain’t gonna do you no good.”

  Blackie stared at Pike for a moment, and then he just shook his head and went back to the fire to finish cooking breakfast.

  Pike looked around at his men. “Where the hell are Billy and Sam?” he asked.

  Rufus Gordon sat up in his blankets and glanced around, and then he shrugged. “They ain’t here yet, Boss.”

  “If those lazy bastards fell asleep on guard duty, I’m gonna kick their asses!” Pike growled.

  “Hank, you and Sarge go get ’em and bring ’em back here pronto,” Pike ordered.

  As Snow and Rutledge walked off toward the two sentries’ posts, Pike squatted down, picked a piece of bacon out of the frying pan, and began to munch on it while he waited to see what was keeping the guards.

  A few minutes later, both Rutledge and Snow came running back into the camp, their faces pale and sweating in spite of the frigid temperatures of the morning air. Snow looked as if he was going to throw up.

  “What is it? What’s the matter with you two?” Pike asked, his brow furrowed with worry.

  “You . . . you better come on over here and take a look for yourself,” Snow managed as he bent over, his hands on his knees, and dry-heaved.

  Pike and the other men moved through the brush to the place where Sam Kane had been stationed. Lying on a boulder was a bloody scalp, two ears, and a tongue, arranged in a grotesque parody of a face on the bloody rock.

  “Jesus!” Pike said, his stomach turning until he too thought he was going to be sick.

  Sally Jensen pushed a couple of the men aside and stood before the boulder, a sympathetic look on her face for the dead men. “Oh, Mr. Pike,” she said quietly. “I believe you’ve now seen some of my husband’s handiwork.”

  Pike whirled around and glared at her. “Ain’t no white man done this!” he shouted. “It must’ve been Indians.”

  Sally s
hook her head. “No, Mr. Pike. I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, his voice a dry croak.

  “In the first place, Indians wouldn’t have left the scalps or the . . . other trophies,” she explained. “And in the second place, if the Indians had killed your men, why do you think they would not have come on into camp and finished the rest of you off while you were sleeping?”

  Pike looked at Rutledge. “What about Billy?” he asked, his eyes wide.

  Rutledge shook his head. “Worse than this. You’d better come look.”

  The entire group moved across the camp, breakfast forgotten, and approached the sentry post of Billy Gatsby. They found his entire head stuck on a pole in the ground, his eyes open and staring at them as if in reproach, his swollen tongue protruding from an obviously broken jaw.

  Pike whirled around, grabbed Sally by the shoulders, and shouted into her face. “What kind of man is your husband?”

  She smiled back, unaffected by his display of temper. “He is a man of the old school, Mr. Pike. An eye for an eye and all of that.”

  “But we ain’t harmed you none,” Pike said, his voice becoming more normal as he got control of himself.

  “You kidnapped me against my will, Mr. Pike, and you killed two of our friends back at the ranch. That’s enough for Smoke.” She turned her head to look at Billy. “I’m afraid this is what you’ve all got to look forward to for what you’ve done.”

  Pike jerked his gun out and pointed it at Sally. “Then it won’t make any difference if I kill you now, will it?”

  Sally showed no fear. “Not in the end result perhaps. You are all going to die, that is as certain as the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow. However, the manner in which you die will be determined by how you treat me.”

  Pike gritted his teeth, pulled back the hammer on his pistol, and stuck the barrel under Sally’s chin.

  She stared back at him with clear eyes and did not flinch in the slightest.

  Blackie Johnson stepped over and put his hand on Pike’s arm. “Maybe we’d better listen to what she says, Boss. If we kill her now, we won’t have any hold over Jensen to make him come to us in Pueblo.”

  “Blackie’s right, Bill,” Zeke Thompson said. “I haven’t waited all these years to be cheated out of my chance at Jensen ’cause you get pissed off.”

  Blackie glanced back over his shoulder at Zeke. “What do you mean, waited all these years, Zeke?” he asked. “I thought this was about the reward on Jensen’s head.”

  Thompson blushed and stammered, “It was just a figure of speech, Blackie. What I meant to say was, I been waiting for a score like this for a lotta years and I don’t want to blow it now.”

  Pike took a deep breath and let the hammer down on his gun. He holstered it and then he pointed at Sally with his finger. “You get a second chance, Mrs. Jensen, but if that crazy husband of yours does something like this again, I’ll make you suffer like you’ve never even dreamed of.”

  Sally gave him a half smile and turned and made her way back to the camp, where she calmly poured herself another cup of coffee and sat there staring at the forgotten frying pan as the bacon strips slowly turned to charcoal.

  * * *

  Smoke, who’d been watching the scene below from a vantage point on a ledge fifteen hundred yards up the mountain, gently let the hammer down on the Sharps buffalo rifle he was holding. When Pike had put the pistol under Sally’s chin, Smoke had drawn a bead on the man’s head. He’d had the trigger half-depressed when Pike lowered his gun, saving his life.

  Smoke took a deep breath. He knew how close he’d come to losing Sally, and the feeling made him weak with unaccustomed fear.

  Time to back off for a while and let the situation simmer down, he thought to himself. As he moved down the mountain to where Cal and Pearlie were waiting for him, he began to make plans for his meeting with the outlaws in Pueblo and how he was going to handle it.

  He knew it was going to take all of his skill to meet with Pike and not let the man get the upper hand.

  The main thing he had to do was to stall the kidnappers along until he could get Sally out from under their control, which meant he’d have to leave the rest of them alive until he could figure out a way to do that without getting her killed by the desperados.

  When he arrived back at the place where Cal and Pearlie were holding the horses, he put the Sharps in its rifle boot and climbed into the saddle.

  “Did our little show have the desired effect?” Pearlie asked.

  Smoke nodded. “It sure got them to thinking,” he replied. He sat on his horse and built himself a cigarette. When he was done, he stuck the butt in the corner of his mouth, struck a lucifer on his pants leg, and lit the cigarette. As smoke trailed from his nostrils, he said, “Now, here’s what we’re going to do when we get to Pueblo.”

  When he was finished explaining his plan, they rode off after the outlaws.

  17

  As Pike led his men through mountain passes toward Pueblo, Colorado Territory, he began to leave two men a slight distance behind to watch their backtrail. With what had happened to Sam and Billy, he now knew Smoke Jensen was in the vicinity, and he wasn’t going to take any chances of Jensen sneaking up on them while they were riding.

  When they got close to the town of Pueblo, he checked a map he’d been given while in Utah by a man who used to mine the area. The man had told him of a played-out mining camp north of Pueblo up in the mountain range that had some shacks and a couple of old mine shafts that would be perfect for what Pike had in mind.

  The trail from Canyon City to Pueblo followed the course of the Arkansas River as it meandered south-east through the foothills of the mountains. The map indicated that just before reaching Pueblo, Pike should turn north and circle around the city until he came to a creek named Fountain Creek, which ran straight south toward Pueblo, where it then joined the Arkansas River. The deserted mining camp would be found about five miles north of the city on the banks of the creek.

  As the group of outlaws rode single file down the trail, their horses moving slowly as they plowed through knee-deep snow, Sally slowed her horse until she was abreast of Blackie Johnson. She’d picked him to talk to because of all the men in the gang he seemed the least hostile toward her.

  “Mr. Johnson,” she said in a low voice that couldn’t be heard more than a few feet away.

  Johnson looked at her and nodded, but didn’t speak.

  “What was that you were saying back at the camp about a wanted poster on Smoke?”

  Johnson glanced up at the head of the line of men, making sure Pike couldn’t hear him. “Bill has a poster we picked up in Utah that says your husband is worth ten thousand dollars, dead or alive,” he answered, also speaking in a low voice.

  “So,” Sally said, “that’s why you’re riding with these men?”

  Johnson gave her a look. “Mrs. Jensen, no matter what you think of us, we wouldn’t be out here waiting for your husband to come so we can kill him if he didn’t deserve it. Men don’t get ten-thousand-dollar rewards put on them if they haven’t done some pretty bad things. We’re Regulators, not bandits.”

  Sally looked puzzled. “Well, no matter what you call yourselves, there can’t be a wanted poster out on Smoke. Smoke hasn’t been wanted by the law for over ten years. All of the posters were recalled years ago by the governor of the territory.”

  Johnson slowed his horse and stared at her. “Are you sure about that?” he asked.

  Sally smiled slightly. “Of course I’m sure. Smoke is in no trouble with the law, Mr. Johnson, and hasn’t been for some years.” She sighed deeply. “Think about it. With that much money at stake, you would have had to stand in line behind other bounty hunters to get at Smoke if it was true. After all, we weren’t exactly living in hiding in Colorado.”

  Johnson’s eyes narrowed and he stared at Pike’s back. “I’ll admit, Mrs. Jensen, I’ve been having my doubts. I thought it might be som
ething like that. I couldn’t figure why a man with such a price on his head would be living openly on a ranch in Colorado Territory so close to Utah.”

  Sally gave a low laugh. “That’s simple. It’s because he’s not wanted and hasn’t been for some time.”

  Johnson nodded slowly. “That figures,” he said, disgust in his voice. He gave Pike, riding up ahead of them, a speculative look. “Bill must have some other reason for coming after your husband, something he didn’t tell us about.”

  Sally gave him a close look. “You really don’t know what all this is about, do you?” she asked.

  Johnson turned his head to look her in the eyes. “No. The only reason Pike gave us was the money we’d make if we killed Jensen. Do you have any idea what’s going on?” he asked, still speaking in a low voice so those in front of and behind them couldn’t hear his words.

  “Yes. It seems some years ago, Smoke shot and killed Mr. Pike’s brother, and he wounded his half brother, Zeke. It must have been a severe wound, resulting in the problems he now has with his arm and leg.”

  Johnson’s lips turned white as he pressed them together. “So, all this is about him getting even with your husband for something he did to his family a long time ago?”

  Sally nodded.

  Johnson lifted his reins and sat up straighter in his saddle. “That son of a bitch just got Billy and Sam killed, and there isn’t even going to be any money in it for us.”

  He rested his right hand on the butt of his pistol. “I think I’ll go call him on it right now.”

  Sally shook her head. “No, Mr. Johnson, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  “Why not?” he asked, relaxing a little.

  “Because you have no proof, other than my word, and I do not think the men will believe me.”

  “You’re right. These stupid galoots won’t want to think they’ve come all this way for nothing.”