Power of the Mountain Man Read online

  * * *

  Forrest Gore had his own ideas about finding Smoke Jensen. “It’s goddamned impossible,” he declared to the five men gathered around a small pond in the Cibola Range.

  “Smoke Jensen camped here last night. We all know that,” Gore lectured to his men. “Then he rode out to the west early this morning.”

  He was wrong, but he didn’t know it yet. Ty Hardy had spent the night there, and ridden back to the Tucker Ranch shortly before first light. Two of the hard cases, suspecting that they chased the wrong will-o’-the-wisp, muttered behind gloved hands. A minute later, Smoke Jensen proved them right.

  With startling effect, a bullet cracked over their heads and sent down a shower of leaves. Forrest Gore jumped upright and hugged the bole of a tree, putting its bulk between him and the direction from which the slug came. Then the sound of the shot rippled over the mountain slopes.

  “We been set up,” another gunhawk announced unnecessarily. “That’s Smoke Jensen out there, and he’s got us cold.”

  “I’m gettin’ out of here,” the fourth man announced.

  “No! Wait,” Forrest Gore urged. “Keep a sharp eye. When he fires again, we can spot where he is, split up, and close in on him.”

  Vern Draper snorted in derision. “By the time we get there, he’ll be gone.”

  “Yeah, an’ firin’ at us from some other place,” Pearly Cousins added.

  Forrest Gore gave their words careful consideration. They had been hunting Smoke Jensen for the better part of two weeks now. With always the same results. The bastard was never seen, and they got shot at. Maybe it wasn’t Smoke Jensen at all? With a troubled frown, Gore worked his idea over out loud.

  “What if that’s not Jensen at all? What if it’s one of those hands of his, who broke up the lynch mob? It ain’t possible that he was down in San Antonio and leadin’ you fellers around by the nose up here in the Cibolas at the same time.”

  “I don’t think it was him down there,” Cousins opined.

  “Who else could do in four of our guys, and send Charlie Bascomb runnin’ with his tail ’twixt his legs?” Gore challenged. “I say we’re lookin’ in the wrong place. I say we leave whoever it is up here to hisself, and head south.”

  “You better clear that with Quint,” Vern Draper suggested pointedly.

  “Quint’s busy elsewhere. Payne sent me out here to help you find Smoke Jensen. I think he’s clean out of the area. So, we go where he is.”

  Another round from the Express rifle of Smoke Jensen convinced the others to follow the rather indistinct orders of Forrest Gore.

  * * *

  Later that day, Smoke Jensen met with Jeff York and the hands from the Sugarloaf. They sat around a table in the bunkhouse at the Tucker ranch, cleaning their weapons and drinking coffee. Smoke made an announcement that caught their immediate attention.

  “Looks like the searchers are being pulled out of the mountains. I think it’s time to pay another visit to the B-Bar-H.”

  Jeff produced a broad grin. “I sorta hoped you’d do that. I want to pay my respects to Sir Mucky-muck.”

  They rode out half an hour later. Ty and Walt went deeper into the Cibolas, to track and harass the hard cases with Gore. Also to determine where they might be headed. Smoke and Jeff covered ground at a steady pace.

  An hour before nightfall, they reached the tall, stone columns with the proud sign above that declared this to be the B-Bar-H. Smoke studied the fancy letters a moment. Then he cut his eyes to Jeff.

  “I think this is a good place to start,” Smoke declared.

  He loosed a rope from his saddle, and Jeff did the same. It took them only a minute to climb the stone pillars and affix their lariats to the edges of the sign. Back in the saddle, they made solid dallies around the horns, and walked away from the gateway. When the ropes went taut, the metal frame began to creak and groan. Smoke Jensen touched blunt spurs to the flanks of his roan stallion, and the animal set its haunches and strained forward.

  Jeff York did the same, with immediate results. A loud crash signaled the fall of the wrought-iron letters. Badly bent and twisted, the B-Bar-H banner lay in a cloud of dust, blocking the entrance road. Smoke and Jeff retrieved their lassos and chuckled at their mischief, as they cantered off over the lush pasture grass. The rest of Smoke Jensen’s plans contained nothing so lighthearted.

  * * *

  Geoffrey Benton-Howell had learned one thing from the attack on his headquarters. Smoke Jensen located the first night guard while a magenta band still lay on the mountains to the west. He signaled Jeff to ride on to their chosen spot, and put a gloved index finger to one eye to sign to keep a lookout for more sentries. Then he walked his roan right up to the guard.

  “Who are you?” the surly hard case asked, a moment before Smoke Jensen drew with blinding speed and smacked the hapless man in the side of his head.

  Well, perhaps they weren’t all that much smarter than those he had encountered before. At least this one recognized a stranger when he saw one. Smoke dragged the unconscious outlaw from the saddle and trussed him up. He pulled the man’s boots off and stuffed a smelly sock in a sagging mouth. Then, with the empty boots fastened in the stirrups, he smacked the rump of the gunhawk’s mount and sent it off away from the house.

  A short distance further, he found another one, similarly done up by Jeff York. Smoke smiled grimly and rode on. A roving patrol of two came into sight next. Smoke Jensen eased himself out of the saddle and slid through the tall grass. When the horsemen drew nearer, Smoke rose to the side of one silent as a wraith. Sudden movement showed him Jeff York likewise engaged.

  One startled yelp came from an unhorsed hard case before Jeff had him on the ground and thoroughly throttled. Smoke’s man made not a sound. Smoke came to his boots after tying the sentry, and waggled a finger at Jeff.

  “Sloppy. He made a noise.”

  “Sorry, teacher,” Jeff jibed back. “I’ll do better next time.”

  “Might not be a next time before we’re in position. I’d like to put them all down, before we start shooting.”

  “That’ll take some time,” Jeff observed.

  “That’s why we came early.”

  Smoke drifted off to recover his horse. Jeff York swore to himself that he had not even seen his friend start away. For a moment he had a flash of pity for the men they would encounter this night. Then he said softly to himself, “Nawh.”

  A quarter hour went by before Smoke found another night guard. The man sat with his back to a tree, eyes fixed on the higher ground away from the ranch house. Somewhat brighter than the others, Smoke reasoned. He had no reason to suspect someone coming from behind him. Too bad.

  Easing up to the tree, Smoke bent around its rough bark and popped the unaware sentry on the head with a revolver barrel. It took only seconds to secure tight bonds. Then Smoke Jensen slipped on through the night. There would be a moon tonight. Smoke had taken that into consideration.

  He and Jeff would fire and move, fire and move, until each had exhausted a full magazine load. Then time to leave, before the silver light of the late-rising half-moon made them too easy to see. All in all, he anticipated making life even more miserable for Geoffrey Benton-Howell.

  * * *

  Windows had been reglazed in most of the downstairs portion of the two-story frame house. Yellow lamplight spilled from one, as Smoke Jensen eased into a prone firing position on the slope above. He sighted in carefully, with the bright blue-white line of the burning wick resting on the top of his front sight. Slowly he drew a deep breath, let out half, and squeezed the trigger.

  With a strong jolt, the steel butt-plate shoved his shoulder as the Winchester Express went off. While Smoke came to his boots, he listened for the tinkle of glass. It came seconds later, followed at once by sudden darkness within the house as the lamp exploded into fragments. An outraged voice wailed after it.

  “Goddamnit! Jensen’s back,” Geoffrey Benton-Howell raged in the darkness.
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br />   While Smoke moved to his second location, Jeff let off a round from the opposite side of the house. Yells of consternation came from the bunkhouse, as the thin wall gave little resistance to a .44-40 slug. Grinning in the starlit night, Smoke dropped into a kneeling stance.

  “Get in here, somebody! Damnit, this place is on fire,” yelped a now frightened Benton-Howell.

  “Tien paciencia, amigo,” Miguel Selleres called out.

  “Have patience, hell! I’ll burn up in here.”

  An eerie new light glowed in the ruined window. It flickered and grew in intensity as Smoke Jensen sighted in once more, this time on the door across the room. He put a round about chest-high through the oak partition. A muffled scream came from the hall beyond. It served to notify Benton-Howell that he had a fat chance of getting out that way.

  Smoke Jensen was already at a steady lope through the trees, when the remaining glass in the sash tinkled and Geoffrey Benton-Howell dived through to escape the flames. Smoke stopped abruptly and fired a round into the pool of darkness directly below the window. A howl that blended into a string of curses told him he had come close, but not close enough. Jeff York shot twice this time, and dumped a man in the doorway of the bunkhouse with a bullet in one leg.

  “Don’t get overconfident, Jeff,” Smoke whispered to himself.

  From the position he had selected earlier, Smoke put a. 45-70-500 round through a second floor window. At once, he heard the alarmed bellow of a man, nearly drowned out by the terrified shriek of a woman. His shoulder had begun to tingle. He knew from experience that it didn’t take too many cartridges run through the big Winchester, to change that sensation to one of numbness. Three rounds left in the magazine tube.

  Smoke wanted to make them count, so he swiftly changed positions. On an off chance, he put the next bullet through the outhouse at about what he estimated would be an inch or two above head high on an average man. He was rewarded with a howl of sheer terror as a man burst out the front of the chicksale, his trousers at half-mast. Legs churning, the Levis tripped the hard case and sent him sprawling. Two cartridges to go, then Smoke would meet Jeff where they had left their horses.

  Unexpectedly a target presented itself in Smoke’s field of fire. A huge man, barrel-chested, thick-shouldered, arms like most men’s thighs, hands like hams, barreled around the corner of the house and snapped a Winchester to his shoulder. He fired blindly, the slug nowhere near Smoke Jensen or Jeff York. Cursing, he worked the lever rapidly and expended all eleven .44-40 rounds.

  Sprayed across the hillside, the next to the last found meat in horseflesh. Jeff York’s mount squealed in pain and fright, reared, and fell over dead on its side. Anger clouded Smoke Jensen’s face.

  “Damn, I hate a man who’d needlessly kill a horse,” Smoke grunted.

  He took aim and, as the last bullet sped from the Winchester in the giant’s hand, discharged a 500 grain slug that pinwheeled the shooter and burst his heart. Only twenty yards from his horse, Smoke put out another light in a downstairs window and hurried to the nervous roan.

  Jeff York joined him a moment later, and began to strip the saddle off his dead mount. Smoke had the bridle and reins in one hand. “We’ll double up,” he informed Jeff.

  “Make it easier to track and catch us,” Jeff complained. “I’ll walk out.”

  “No. I brought you here; I’ll get you back. They aren’t going anywhere for a while.”

  Jeff looked back toward the house. A bucket brigade had formed to douse the flames that roared from two rooms of the ranch house. With a whinny, a horse-drawn, two-wheel hand-pumper rolled up from a small carriage house next to the barn. A pair of hard cases ran with a canvas hose to the creek bank, and plunged the screened end into the water. At once four volunteers began to swing the walking arms up and down. An unsteady stream spurted from the nozzle.

  “No, I guess you’re right,” he told Smoke.

  Even so, Smoke Jensen wasted no time, nor spared any caution in departing from the B-Bar-H. He left behind a cursing, shrieking, livid Geoffrey Benton-Howell.

  * * *

  After the large number of recent disasters, Benton-Howell had been forced to send for reinforcements. The nine men who had been patrolling the slope behind the house on the previous night had quit first thing after being found the next morning. Smoke Jensen had nearly succeeded in burning down his house. His study was a ruin. All meals were being prepared in the bunkhouse; the kitchen had burned out completely. Now he confronted one of the men he considered responsible for his current calamity.

  Sheriff Jake Reno stood across the cherry wood desk in Benton-Howell’s office above the bank. With him was the mayor of Socorro. Both wore sheepish expressions. Benton-Howell had poured copious amounts of his deep-seated vitriol over them. Only now had he begun to wind down.

  “I didn’t spend the money to get you two elected to hear a constant stream of reports of failure. I expected competence. I expected success. Now, I’m going to get it. I want your full cooperation. No complaints, no excuses, no lectures on why it can’t be done. I’m putting out the word for every available gunhand in the Southwest, to come here to put an end to Smoke Jensen.”

  “I thought you wanted it all done legally,” the sheriff protested.

  “I wanted results!” Benton-Howell snapped.

  Mayor Ruggles looked stricken. “You’ll fill the streets of Socorro with saddle tramps and every two-bit gunslick around,” he whined. “Think of the good people of the community.”

  “I am thinking of the good people—Miguel Selleres and myself.”

  “Why don’t you simply offer a larger reward?” Jake Reno suggested.

  Too tightfisted to raise the ante on Smoke Jensen’s head, Geoffrey Benton-Howell spluttered a minute, then focused his disarrayed thoughts on a new proposition. “Without gunmen to collect it, that would only tie up more of my money. What’s going to happen, is that the city is going to add a thousand dollars to the reward.”

  “What?” the mayor and sheriff echoed together.

  “If you think it such a good idea for me to put out more funds for the purpose, then surely it behooves you to do it.” To Mayor Ruggles he added, with a roguish wink, “Sort of putting your money where your mouth is, eh, old boy?”

  In that quick, pointed thrust, Mayor Ruggles lost his head of steam. “If that’s what you want, we’ll see about it right away. Only let me appeal to you to keep the gun trash out of town.”

  “It’s your posterior they’ll be saving, as well as mine. You and Sheriff Eagle Eye here. Now, get out of here and run your errands like good little lads. I want fifty—no, a hundred guns in here, and Smoke Jensen stretched over his saddle shortly thereafter.”

  16

  Socorro became a busy place as the word went out for fast guns. Mayor Ruggles stewed and dithered, his anxious eyes scanning the rough-edged characters who swarmed the streets. The new posters came out with the wording: “$2000 Reward Offered for Capture Dead or Alive of the Killer of Lawrence Tucker.” No mention was made of Smoke Jensen. It sounded good that way, all agreed.

  Some of the gunfighters and wannabes who came to Socorro to search for the “killer,” left suddenly when they learned the identity of the accused. Sheriff Jake Reno noted with some smugness that eleven no-reputation young pretenders departed in a group shortly after the mention of the name Smoke Jensen.

  “Perhaps they decided that it was safer to travel in numbers,” he confided to Morton Plummer at the Hang Dog shortly after they blew out of town.

  “Considerin’ who it is they were expected to run to ground, I’d say they’re right smart fellers,” Mort responded with a grin. He loved to tweak this pompous ass of a sheriff.

  Reno scowled. “Watch that lip, Mort.” He quickly downed his shot and beer and stormed out of the saloon.

  Being on the payroll of Benton-Howell and Selleres had other drawbacks, Sheriff Jake Reno considered as he directed his boots toward the jail. Those politicos who remained beh
ind had been frightened almost witless by that second visit from Smoke Jensen. Only an hour ago, Benton-Howell had summoned him to the office to demand that he put men on the ranch to keep the politicians there, until an agreement could be reached on his White Mountain project.

  “Like he’d bought all my deputies, too,” Reno complained aloud, as he hurried to round up men to guard the B-Bar-H.

  He returned to the world around him in time to meet the cold, hard stare of one of a pair of gaunt- and narrow-faced men with the look of gunfighters about them. Their square chins jutted high in arrogance, and the mean curl of their lips had to come from hours of practice before a mirror. The one with black leather gloves folded over his cartridge belt spoke, revealing yellowed, crooked teeth.

  “Sheriff. Just the man we wanted to see. How are we supposed to find this feller done killed your Mr. Tucker, if we don’t know his name? Who is he, or do you know?”

  “Oh, I know all right. The name is Smoke Jensen.”

  “Not the Smoke Jensen?” the sneering one blurted as his face grew pale.

  “The only Smoke Jensen I know,” Sheriff Reno replied, as he laughed inwardly at the discomfort his words sparked.

  The sneer gone from his face, the gunhawk cut his eyes to his partner. They appeared to reach wordless agreement that concluded with a nod. “Do you happen to have any idea where he might be found?” The question seemed to lack conviction of being acted upon.

  “Yep. He’s hangin’ out in the Cibolas, last I heard.”

  “Why ain’t you got a posse out?” the taller of the two challenged.

  “I already lost a dozen good men to that bastard. I don’t reckon to reduce the whole population of Socorro to bring him outta there.” It was a lie. Smoke Jensen had killed only three of the posse, wounded six or seven more. Also some twenty had quit all together. What Sheriff Reno wouldn’t admit was that he couldn’t get anyone to go after Smoke Jensen. Not even Quint Stalker’s men.

  “Bein’ we’re from Texas, which way is these Cibolas?”

  Suspecting what would come next, Sheriff Reno waved his arm expansively. “All around here. To the east, north, and mostly to the west. That’s where Smoke Jensen can be found, west of here, I’m certain of it.”