Shootout of the Mountain Man Read online

  “All right,” Minnie said with a nod of her head. “I understand.” She put her hand across the table to rest it on Smoke’s hand. “Bobby Lee is lucky to have a friend like you,” she said.

  It was much later that same night when Smoke rode his horse down to the far end of Fremont Street. Because of the lateness of the hour, most of the town was asleep, though the sound of the piano could be heard spilling out onto the street from the Gold Strike Saloon. As far as Smoke could tell, he was the only one outside, and almost every building was dark, though from a few houses that sat back off the main street, there could be seen the dim glow of a lantern or candle.

  Smoke rode by the gallows, looming large and ominous in the night. The sign containing the doggerel about the hanging, written by some clever, if morose, bard, was still in place. Fortunately, it was unreadable now because of the darkness.

  Looking around to make certain he wasn’t being observed, Smoke removed a small piece of cardboard from under his shirt. On one side the cardboard read: PEAR’S SOAP.

  On the other side, Smoke had hand-lettered a sign of his own. Using his knife, he pried a nail out from the gallows, just far enough to allow him to attach the sign.

  Come one, come all

  Nobody is going to fall.

  On Friday there will be nothing to see,

  ‘Cause Bobby Lee will be with me.

  Smoke chuckled. All right, he conceded, it wasn’t up to the level of Longfellow, but it was certainly appropriate for the occasion.

  Somewhere, a dog began yapping, and a bit closer, he could hear a baby crying. A cat jumped down off the porch from Tilghman’s Apothecary, and ran quickly and silently across the street in front of Smoke, bounding gracefully onto the front porch of Goldstein’s Feed and Seed. If anyone was watching through a window of one of the dark buildings, they would assume Smoke was riding out of town, which is exactly what he wanted them to think.

  Smoke rode between the track and the river for about a mile beyond the edge of town. Just to the left of him, the river was a narrow, babbling ribbon of black, with silver highlights from the three-quarter moon that hung overhead. Out here he heard the yipping and yowling of a coyote, and the quieter, but closer hoot of an owl.

  Once he had ridden far enough into the dark to be absolutely certain that he could no longer be seen by anyone who might have been watching him, he made a very big U, then came back into the town, only this time he entered Cloverdale, not on Freemont Street, which was the main street, but through the alley that ran between Freemont Street and Vaughan Lane. There was no ambient light back here, and the adjacent buildings cast shadows over the moon glow so that the alley was exceptionally dark. Smoke rode very slowly, trusting his horse, Seven, to find its way.

  “There are other names for horses, you know,” Sally had told him when he bought the horse and announced its name.

  “I know.”

  “This is your third horse named Seven. And you’ve had three named Drifter. ”

  “I like the names. ”

  “Evidently. But you can’t just keep naming every horse the same thing. ”

  “Why not? Didn’t you tell me that England had eight kings named Henry?”

  Sally started to respond, then shook her head and laughed. “You win,” she said. “How can I argue with that?”

  Smoke stopped behind Bloomberg’s Mercantile, then tied off his horse.

  “Wait here, Seven, I’m about to bring you some company,” he said. Seven snorted and shook his head as if he had understood every word, and Smoke picked his way carefully through the bottle-strewn alley as he moved toward the jailhouse. When he reached the jail, he crossed the alley and stepped into a barn that was just behind the jail. It was very dark inside the barn, but he could hear, as well as smell, the horses. Removing a small candle from his pocket, he popped a match with his fingernail, then lit the candle. Wedging the candle between two boards, he used the wavering light to pick out the gray. He saw too that the saddle was still in place on the half wall.

  Once he had everything located, he extinguished the candle lest someone see a light in the barn and wonder how it got there. Walking over to where he had seen the saddle, he picked it up, then felt his way into the gray’s stall. Working in the dark, he put the saddle on the horse’s back and it whickered, shook, and stomped its left front foot.

  “Easy, boy,” Smoke said soothingly. He cupped the gray’s ear in his hand. “I’m a friend of Bobby Lee’s. I’m taking you to him.”

  Smoke’s soothing voice had the effect of calming the horse. He cinched the saddle down, then led the gray out of the barn, and then three buildings up the alley, where he tied it off alongside Seven.

  “See here, Seven, I told you I was going to bring you some company. Now you two get acquainted,” he said easily. “I want the two of you to get to know each other because if everything goes right, you’ll be spending a lot of time together.

  “That is, if everything goes right,” he repeated under his breath.

  From Seven’s saddlebags, he pulled out the package he had bought at the mining supply store earlier in the day, then removed the wrapper, exposing two sticks of dynamite. With dynamite in hand, he started back toward the jailhouse, leaving the horses behind him. He had tied the horses behind the Mercantile store rather than the jail because he wanted to make certain the animals were far enough away not to be hurt by the detonation of the dynamite.

  There was definitely going to be an explosion, and it was going to be a big one, because Smoke planned to blow a hole in the back of the cell that Bobby Lee was occupying. The challenge would be in getting an explosion of sufficient force to blast a hole large enough for Bobby Lee to crawl through, without making it so big that it brought down the entire building and injured, or even killed, Bobby Lee. But though that might challenge most, it wouldn’t be a particular challenge to Smoke. He had done a lot of exploring, prospecting, and even mining in his young life, and he had, long ago, become an expert in the use of explosives such as nitroglycerine and dynamite.

  When Smoke reached the back of the jailhouse, he stopped and listened very closely. Though muffled, he could still hear sounds from the saloon at the far end of the street, the tinkling of the piano, augmented now by the high-pitched laughter of one of the women, as well as the loud guffaws of more than one man. He could also hear crickets and other night insects. From the corral of the freight wagon company came the bray of a mule.

  So far, not one person had seen him, and that was very good. He didn’t need to be arousing any suspicions now.

  Smoke got down on his knees and studied the brick wall. He found one brick that was cracked all the way through. Pulling his knife from its rawhide scabbard, Smoke began working at the mortar around the brick until all of it was chipped away. With the mortar gone, it was easy to pull out the broken half of the brick. That gave Smoke a hole into which he could place the two sticks of dynamite.

  Smoke put the two sticks of dynamite in the hole, wedging them back in place with the broken pieces of brick. Then he pulled the small piece of candle from his pocket again and, once more popping the match head with his thumbnail, lit the wick. Using his hat to shield the light of the candle from unwanted view, he checked the time on his pocket watch.

  It was four minutes after eleven.

  Inside the jail cell, Bobby Lee wondered what was going on. He had heard nothing from Smoke since the quick meeting he’d had with him earlier today.

  That made him feel a bit uneasy. He wished he would have heard from him again, at least one more time, just to reassure him that everything was still in place. But as his cell had no rear window, there was no easy way Smoke could have made contact with him. He just had to assume that Smoke would keep his word, and from what he remembered of the man who had once been married to his sister, Smoke Jensen was a man of his word.

  Bobby Lee checked the clock on the wall for at least the tenth time in the last four minutes. When it reached four minutes afte
r eleven, he pulled the mattress from his bunk, then moved to the front of the cell and lay as close to the cell bars as he could. Smoke had told him only to be here at five after, but Bobby Lee was taking no chances on the clock having lost time during the day.

  Holding the mattress over him securely, he waited.

  The clock was ticking loudly, but not as loudly as the snores of Deputy Jackson, who had the night duty, and who was sleeping in his chair in the front office.

  He wanted to look at the clock again, but he couldn’t do so without raising his head up from under the mattress, and he was afraid to do that. Smoke had said specifically, “If it doesn’t kill us both.” Bobby Lee was sure he intended to blast out the back wall, and he didn’t want to take a chance on sticking his head out at the exact moment of the blast.

  How long should he stay here?

  What if Smoke was five minutes late? An hour late? What if he didn’t show up at all?

  He would show up. Bobby Lee was sure he would show up and if he had to, he would lay right here, on the floor, until daylight tomorrow morning.

  The steady ticking of the clock and the loud, ripping snores of the deputy continued.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Gold Strike normally did a very brisk business between ten p.m. and midnight, and it being nearly five after eleven, the saloon was filled with customers. Arnie Sage was grinding away at the piano, a couple of the girls were dancing with the customers, and the other three were moving around the room smiling and serving drinks.

  Doc Baker was playing a game of chess with Byron Hughes, the pharmacist. Paul, the bartender, was busier than he had been all night, and Nabors, who, for much of the night had been helping out behind the bar, had just walked away to take a break. He saw Minnie sitting alone and he crossed over to join her.

  “What’s wrong with all the men in here that not one of them will sit with a pretty girl?” Nabors asked. “I can’t believe you are all alone.”

  “Several have come over, but I’ve sent them away. I’m sorry, Nate, I know I should be more friendly, I mean it’s your business and all,” Minnie said, “but I’m just too nervous right now.”

  “I know you are nervous, and I don’t blame you. But don’t worry about it,” Nabors said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “There’s nobody in town who didn’t know about you and Bobby Lee, and they know he’s going to be hung on Friday, so nobody is going to hold it against you.”

  “You mean he is scheduled to be hanged on Friday,” Minnie said.

  “Yes, scheduled.”

  “I’m hoping that Mr. Jensen will be able to change that,” Minnie said.

  “Well, don’t get your hopes up too high,” Nabors warned. “I’m sure he means well, but to be honest, I don’t have any idea of what he could possibly do to get Bobby Lee out.”

  “I know it seems impossible, but I have a feeling about this man Smoke Jensen. I have a very good feeling about him,” Minnie said.

  “How is Janet doing?” Nabors asked, turning in his chair to look at the young woman who had been special friends with Andy Emerson. “It looks like she is doing all right.”

  Janet was laughing and flirting with all the men.

  “Not really,” Minnie said. “If you ask me, it looks like she’s trying just a little too hard.”

  “Yeah, you may be right,” Nabors said. He nodded toward a group of cowboys who were standing at the end of the bar. “Those boys all rode with Andy, and they seem to be taking it all right,” he said. “They’ve been telling ‘remember when’ stories about him all night.”

  Minnie smiled. “From what I knew of Andy Emerson, there are probably quite a few stories to be told.”

  She and Nabors grew quiet so they could listen in to the latest story.

  “Remember when Mr. Poindexter was going to sell that horse that Andy always rode?” one of the cowboys said. “Andy asked him not to do it, but Mr. Poindexter said he’d been offered a good deal by Mr. Norton, so he was going to do it. He asked Andy to take the horse over to Mr. Norton’s ranch and Andy did, but what he done was—”

  “What he done was, he fed the horse soap so’s it would commence foamin’ at the mouth,” one of the other riders said, interrupting the first storyteller.

  “And Mr. Norton said he didn’t want no horse with the hoof and mouth,” the third one said.

  By now, all were laughing.

  “And ole Andy, he had the horse all cleaned out when he come back. He told Mr. Poindexter that Mr. Norton accused him of tryin’ to sell off a sick horse,” the fourth said, concluding the story.

  “Mr. Poindexter, he got all upset and wanted to go over and have a few words with Mr. Norton, tell him he didn’t take to being accused of trying to sell a sick horse.”

  “But Andy stopped him, and said it was probably just Mr. Norton’s way of backin’ out of the deal.” Again, all laughed.

  “Andy rode that horse the rest of his life,” one of the others said quietly, and the laughter stopped. “Mr. Poindexter, he sent me in today to tell Gene Crenshaw that he would take care of all the expenses of buryin’ Andy, and he told me to bring back the horse.”

  “It is a good horse.”

  “Yeah. And Andy was a good man.”

  “Let’s have a drink to Andy.”

  “Not just us, ever’body,” one of the others said, and he turned and called out loud. “Ladies and gents! Ladies and gents!” After the second shout, all conversation in the saloon stopped.

  “What is it?” someone asked.

  The Poindexter rider held up his mug of beer. “I’d like for ever’one to have a drink to Andy Emerson,” he said.

  “I ain’t goin’ to drink to the son of a bitch,” someone said. “Hell, we just had a fight last week.”

  “It was a fair fight, warn’t it?” one of the other patrons asked.

  The protestor thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Yeah, it was a fair fight. All right, I’ll drink to him.”

  All in the saloon held their drinks high.

  “To Andy,” the Poindexter rider said.

  “To Andy,” the others repeated, and all drank the toast.

  At that exact moment behind the jail, Smoke was looking at his watch when he saw the minute hand click onto the number one. He held the candle flame to the intertwined fuses of the two sticks of dynamite. As the fuses started sputtering, he ran back to Bloomberg’s Mercantile, then stepped around the corner. He just made it around the corner when the dynamite exploded, the flash of the detonation momentarily lighting up the entire alley.

  The alley was instantly filled with flying shards of brick and billowing smoke, even as the sound of the initial explosion echoed back and reechoed, from both the Shoshone and Toiyabe mountain ranges.

  The patrons of the Gold Strike Saloon had just finished drinking their toast to Andy when they heard the explosion. It was so loud that it caused all the bottles behind the bar to clink together.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Someone blasting in the mines?”

  “No, it’s too late for that and that was too close.”

  The loud, stomach-shaking boom not only alerted those in the saloon, but awakened the entire town. Even before Smoke reached the three-foot-wide hole that was blasted in the rear of the jailhouse, he could hear people beginning to call out in surprise and alarm.

  “What happened?”

  “Hello?”

  “What’s going on?”

  Smoke reached the hole quickly, then stuck his head in. A dim light still emanated from the hall lantern, though the smoke was so thick that it was difficult to see. He could hear coughing.

  “Bobby Lee, are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Bobby Lee replied, and Smoke was pleased to hear that the young man’s voice was just beside him. Bobby Lee emerged from the haze, and sticking out his hand, grabbed Smoke’s hand. “Help pull me through,” he said.

  “Hey! What’s going on back here!” Deputy J
ackson shouted, coming from the front.

  The deputy saw Bobby Lee escaping through the hole and he pulled his gun and fired, but by that time Smoke had already jerked Bobby Lee through, and out into the alley, so the bullets slammed harmlessly into the part of the wall not destroyed by the dynamite blast.

  “Hurry,” Smoke said. “Our horses are down here.”

  “Our horses? You mean mine too?”

  “Yours too.”

  “Wow, my horse too. When you do things, you don’t go halfway, do you?”

  “You remember Preacher, don’t you, Bobby Lee?”

  “Yes, of course I remember Preacher. ”

  “Preacher told me a long time ago, if you are going to do something, do it right the first time, because you may never get a second time.”

  By now, the town was alive with sound, from barking dogs, to screeching cats, to men and women shouting and calling out to each other.

  “Was that a bomb?”

  “It sounded like a bomb.”

  “What would a bomb be doing in Cloverdale?”

  “The roundhouse? A boiler explosion maybe?”

  Smoke and Bobby Lee climbed quickly into their saddles.

  “This way,” Smoke said. He had already spotted the quickest and easiest way out of town. The best way was not back down the alley, which was the way he had come in, but by riding between two houses that backed onto the alley and fronted on Vaughan Lane. By going this way, they would quickly find themselves in the long, snaking ravine that he had seen earlier. The ravine would give them cover and concealment for at least a mile.

  A man, wearing a sleeping gown, was standing on the front porch of one of the two houses as Smoke and Bobby Lee rode by.

  “Here!” the man called out. “What has happened?”

  “I’m not sure,” Smoke called back. “I think there may have been a boiler explosion down at the roundhouse.”