Revenge of the Mountain Man Read online

  “People don’t really believe all that crap that’s been written about me, do they? Hell, Sally, I’ve been reported at fourteen different places at once, according to those stories.”

  “If they just believed the real things you’ve done, Smoke, that is enough to make people very afraid of you.”

  “That’s silly! I never hurt anybody who wasn’t trying to hurt me. People don’t have any reason to be afraid of me.”

  “Well, I’m not afraid of you, Smoke. You’re sort of special to me.”

  He smiled. “Oh, yeah? Well, I’d have to give it a lot of thought if someone was to offer to trade me a spotted pony for you, Sally.”

  2

  Smoke Jensen and Sally Reynolds, gunfighter and schoolteacher, had met several years back, in Idaho. Just before Smoke had very nearly wiped out a town and all the people in it for killing his first wife and their child, Nicole and Baby Arthur; the boy named after Smoke’s friend and mentor, the old mountain man, Preacher.

  Smoke and Sally had married, living in peace for several years in the high lonesome, vast and beautiful mountains of Colorado. Then a man named Tilden Franklin had wanted to be king of the entire valley . . . and he had coveted Smoke’s wife, making it public news.

  Gold had been discovered in the valley, and a bitter, bloody war had ensued.

  And in the end, all Tilden Franklin got was a half-a-dozen slugs in the belly, from the guns of Smoke Jensen, and six feet of hard cold ground.

  That had been almost two years back; two years of peace in the valley and in Smoke and Sally’s high-up ranch called the Sugarloaf.

  Now that had been shattered.

  On the morning of the first full week after the assault on Sally, Smoke sat on the bench outside the snug cabin and sipped his coffee.

  Late spring in the mountains.

  1880, and the West was slowly changing. There would be another full decade of lawlessness, of wild and woolly days and nights; but the law was making its mark felt all over the area. And Smoke, like so many other western men, knew that was both good and bad. For years, a commonsense type of justice had prevailed, for the most part, in the West, and usually—not always, but usually—it worked. Swiftly and oftentimes brutally, but it worked. Now, things were changing. Lawyers with big words and fancy tongues were twisting facts, hiding the guilt to win a case. And Smoke, like most thinking people, thought that to be wrong.

  The coming of courts and laws and lawyers would prove to be both a blessing and a curse.

  Smoke, like most western men, just figured that if someone tried to do you a harm or a meanness, just shoot the son of a bitch and have done with it. ’Cause odds were, the guilty party wasn’t worth a damn to begin with. And damn few were ever going to miss them.

  Smoke, like so many western men, judged other men by what they gave to society as opposed to what they took away from it. If your neighbor’s house or barn burned down or was blown down in a storm, you helped him rebuild. If his crops were bad or his herd destroyed, you helped him out until next season or loaned him some cows and a few bulls. If he and his family were hungry through no fault of their own, you helped out with food and clothing.

  And so on down the line of doing things right.

  And if a man wouldn’t help out, chances were he was trash, and the sooner you got rid of him, the better.

  Western justice and common sense.

  And if people back east couldn’t see that—well, Smoke thought . . . Well, he really didn’t know what to think about people like that. He’d reserve judgment until he got to know a few of them.

  He sipped his coffee and let his eyes drift over that part of his land that he could see from his front yard. And that was a lot of land, but just a small portion of all that he and Sally owned . . . free and clear.

  There was a lot to do before Smoke put Sally on the steam trains and saw her off to the East—and before he started after those who had attacked her like rabid human beasts in the night.

  And there was only one thing you could do with a rabid beast.

  Kill it.

  Billy stepped out of the house and took a seat on the bench beside his adopted father. The boy had been legally adopted by the Jensens; Judge Proctor had seen to that. Billy was pushing hard at his teen years, soon turning thirteen. Already he was a top hand and, even though Smoke discouraged it, a good hand with a gun. Uncommon quick. Smoke and Sally had adopted the boy shortly after the shoot-out in Fontana, and now Billy pulled his weight and then some around the Sugarloaf.

  “You and Miss Sally both gonna go away?” Billy asked, his voice full of gloom.

  “For a time, Billy. Sally thought about taking you back east with her, but you’re in school here, and doing well. So Reverend Ralph and Bountiful are going to look after you. You’ll stay here at the ranch with Pearlie and the hands. We might be gone for the better part of a year, Billy, so it’s going to be up to you to be the man around the place.”

  Pearlie was leaning up against a hitch rail and Smoke winked at his friend and foreman.

  “If I hadn’t a-been out with the hands the other night . . .” Billy said.

  Smoke cut him off. “And if your aunt had wheels, she’d have been a tea cart, Billy. You and the hands were doing what I asked you to do—pushing cattle up to the high grass. Can’t any of you blame yourselves for what happened.”

  “I don’t think my aunt had no wheels, Smoke,” Billy said solemnly. Then he realized that Smoke was funning with him and he smiled. “That would be a sight to see though, wouldn’t it?”

  Pearlie walked up to the man and boy. “We’ll be all right here, Billy. I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re a top hand.”

  Billy grinned at the high compliment.

  When the foreman and the boy had walked away, Smoke stepped back into the house and fixed breakfast for Sally, taking it to her on a tray. He positioned pillows behind her shoulders and gently eased her to an upright position in the bed.

  He sat by the bed and watched her eat; slowly she was regaining her strength and appetite. But she was still very weak and had to be handled with caution.

  She would eat a few bites and then rest for a moment, gathering strength.

  “I’m getting better, Smoke,” she told him with a smile. “And the food is beginning to taste good.”

  “I can tell. At first I thought it was my cooking,” he kidded her. “Your color is almost back to normal. Feel like telling me more about what happened?”

  She ate a few more bites and then pushed the tray from her. “It’s all come back to me. The doctor said it would. He said that sometimes severe traumas can produce temporary memory loss.”

  Colton had told Smoke the same thing.

  She looked at him. “It was close, wasn’t it?”

  “You almost died, honey.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them, saying, “I remember the time. Nine o’clock. I was just getting ready for bed. I remember glancing at the clock. I was in my gown.” Her brow furrowed in painful remembrance, physically and mentally. “I heard a noise outside, or so I thought. But when it wasn’t repeated, I ignored it. I walked in here, to the bedroom, and then I heard the noise again. I remember feeling a bit frightened. . . .”

  “Why?” he interrupted. He was curious, for Sally was not the spooky or flighty kind. She had used a rifle and pistol several times since settling here, and had killed or wounded several outlaws.

  “Because it was not a natural sound. It was raining, and I had asked Billy, when he came in to get lunch packets for the crew, to move the horses into the barn, to their stalls for the night. Bad move, I guess. If Seven or Drifter had been in the corral, they would have warned me.”

  “I would have done the same thing, Sally. Stop blaming yourself. Too much of that going on around here. It was nobody’s fault. It happened, it’s over, and it’s not going to happen again. Believe me, I will see to that.”

  And she knew he would.

  �
��When the noise came again, it was much closer, like someone brushing up against the side of the house. I was just reaching for a pistol when the front door burst open. Three men; at least three men. I got the impression there was more, but I saw only three. I heard three names. I did tell you the names, didn’t I? That part is hazy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Dagget, Lapeer, and Moore. Yes. Now I remember telling you. The one called Dagget smiled at me. Then he said”—she struggled to remember—“‘Too bad we don’t have more time. I’d like to see what’s under that gown.’ Then he lifted his pistol and shot me. No warning. No time at all to do anything. He just lifted his gun and shot me. As I was falling, the other two shot me.”

  Smoke waited, his face expressionless. But his inner thoughts were murderous.

  Sally closed her eyes, resting for a moment before once more reliving the horrible night. “Just as I was falling into darkness, losing consciousness, I heard one say, ‘Now the son of a bitch has us all to deal with.’”

  And I will deal with you, Smoke thought. One by one, on a very personal basis. I will be the judge, the jury, and the executioner.

  Smoke started to roll and light one of his rare cigarettes, then thought better of it. The smoke might cause Sally to cough and he knew that would be harmful.

  “Do you know any of the men I mentioned, Smoke?”

  “No. I can’t say that I’ve even heard of them.” There was a deep and dangerous anger within him. But he kept his voice and his emotions well in check. He hated night riders, of any kind. He knew those types of people were, basically, cowards.

  He kept his face bland. He did not want Sally to get alarmed, although he knew that she knew exactly what he was going to do once she was safely on the train heading east. He also knew that when she did mention it—probably only one time—she would not attempt to stop him.

  That was not her way. She had known the kind of man he was when she married him.

  He met her eyes, conscious of her staring at him, and smiled at her. She held out a hand and Smoke took it, holding it gently.

  “It’s a mystery to me, honey,” she said. “I just don’t understand it. The valley has been so peaceful for so many months. Not a shot fired in anger. Now this.”

  Smoke hushed her, taking the lap tray. He had never even heard of a lap tray until Sally had sent off for one from somewhere back east. “You rest now. Sleep. You want some more laudanum?”

  She minutely shook her head. “No. Not now. The pain’s not too bad. That stuff makes my head feel funny.”

  She was sleeping even before Smoke had closed the door.

  He scraped the dishes and washed them in hot water taken from the stove, then pumped a pot full of fresh water and put that on the stove, checking the wood level that heated the back plate and checking the draft. He peeled potatoes for lunch and dropped them into cold water. Then he swept the floor and tidied up the main room, opening all the windows to let the house cool.

  Then the most famous and feared gunfighter in all the west washed clothes, wrung them out, and hung them up to dry on the clothesline out back, the slight breeze and the warm sun freshening them naturally.

  He walked around to the front of the cabin and sat beside the bedroom window, open just a crack, so he could hear Sally if she needed anything.

  Lapeer, Moore, and Dagget. He rolled those names around in his mind as his fingers skillfully rolled a cigarette. He had never heard of any of them. But he knew one thing for certain.

  They were damn sure going to hear from him.

  3

  Smoke did not leave the Sugarloaf range for weeks. If supplies were needed, one of the hands went into town for them. Smoke did not want to stray very far from Sally’s side.

  The days passed slowly, each one bringing another hint of the summer that lay lazily before them. And Sally grew stronger. Two weeks after the shooting, she was able to walk outside, with help, and sit for a time, taking the sun, taking it easy, growing stronger each day.

  Smoke had spoken with Sheriff Monte Carson several times since the posse’s return from a frustrating and fruitless pursuit. But Monte was just as baffled as Smoke as to the why of Sally’s attack and the identity of the attackers.

  Judge Proctor had been queried, as well as most of the other people around the valley. No one had ever heard of the men.

  It was baffling and irritating.

  Not even the legended Smoke could fight an enemy he could not name and did not know and could not find.

  Yet.

  But he was going to find them, and when he did, he was going to make some sense out of this.

  Then he would kill them.

  * * *

  It was midsummer before Dr. Colton Spalding finally gave Sally the okay to travel. During that time, he had wired the hospital in Boston several times, setting up Sally’s operation. The doctor would use a rather risky procedure called a caesarean to take the baby—if it came to that. But the Boston doctor wanted to examine Sally himself before he elected to use that drastic a procedure. And according to Dr. Spalding, the Boston doctor was convinced a caesarean was necessary.

  “What’s this operation all about?” Smoke asked Dr. Spalding.

  “It’s a surgical procedure used to take the baby if the mother can’t delivery normally.”

  “I don’t understand, but I’ll take your word for it. Is it dangerous?”

  Colton hesitated. With Smoke, it was hard to tell exactly what he knew about any given topic. When they had first met, the doctor thought the young man to be no more than an ignorant brute, a cold-blooded killer. It didn’t take Colton long to realize that while Smoke had little formal education, he was widely read and quite knowledgeable.

  And Colton also knew that Smoke was one of those rare individuals one simply could not lie to. Smoke’s unblinking eyes never left the face of the person who was speaking. Until you grew accustomed to it, it was quite unnerving.

  Before Colton could speak, Smoke said, “Caesar’s mother died from this sort of thing, didn’t she?”

  The doctor smiled, shaking his head. Many of the men of the West were fascinating with what they knew and how they had learned it. It never ceased to amaze the man to see some down-at-the-heels puncher, standing up in a barroom quoting Shakespeare or dissertating on some subject as outrageous as astrology.

  And knowing what he was talking about!

  “Yes, it is dangerous, Smoke. But not nearly so dangerous as when Caesar was born.”

  “Let’s hope not. What happens if Sally decides not to have this operation?”

  “One of two things, Smoke. You will decide whether you want Sally saved, or the baby.”

  “I won’t be there, Doc. So I’m telling you now—save my wife. You pass the word along to this doctor friend of yours in Boston town. Save Sally at all costs. You’ll do that, right?”

  “You know I will. I’ll wire him first thing in the morning.”

  “Thank you.”

  Colton watched as Smoke helped Sally back to bed. He had not fully leveled with the young man about the surgical procedure. Colton knew that sometimes the attending physician had very little choice as to who would be saved. And sometimes, mother and child both died.

  He sighed. They had come so far in medicine, soaring as high as eagles in such a short time. But doctors still knew so very little . . . and were expected to perform miracles at all times.

  “Would that it were so,” Colton muttered, getting into his buggy and clucking at the mare.

  * * *

  As the weather grew warmer and the days grew longer, Sally grew stronger . . . and was beginning to show her pregnancy. Several of the women who lived nearby would come over almost daily, to sew and talk and giggle about the damndest things.

  Smoke left the scene when all that gabble commenced.

  And he was still no closer to finding out anything about the men who attacked his wife.

  Leaving Sally and the women, with two hands always on guar
d near the cabin, Smoke saddled the midnight-black horse with the cold, killer eyes, and he and Drifter went to town.

  The town of Fontana, once called No Name, which had been Tilden Franklin’s town, was dying just as surely as Tilden had died under Smoke’s guns. Only a few stores remained open, and they did very little business.

  It was to the town of Big Rock that Smoke rode, his. 44s belted around his lean waist and tied down, the Henry rifle in his saddle boot.

  Big Rock was growing as Fontana was dying. A couple of nice cafés, a small hotel, one saloon, with no games and no hurdy-gurdy girls. There was a lawyer, Hunt Brook, and his wife, Willow, and a newspaper, the Big Rock Guardian, run by Haywood and Dana Arden. Judge Proctor, the reformed wino, was the district judge and he made his home in Big Rock, taking his supper at the hotel every evening he was in town. Big Rock had a church and a schoolhouse.

  It was a nice quiet little town; but as some men who had tried to tree it found out, Big Rock was best left alone.

  Johnny North, who had married the widow Belle Colby after her husband’s death, was—or had been—one of the West’s more feared and notorious gunfighters. A farmer/rancher now, Johnny would, if the situation called for it, strap on and tie down his guns and step back into his gunfighter’s boots. Sheriff Monte Carson, another ex-gunfighter, was yet another gunhawk to marry a grass widow and settle in Big Rock. Pearlie, Smoke’s foreman, had married and settled down; but Pearlie had also been, at one point in his young life, a much-feared and respected fast gun. The minister, Ralph Morrow, was an ex-prizefighter from back east, having entered the ministry after killing a man with his fists. Ralph preached on Sundays and farmed and ranched during the week. Ralph would also pick up a gun and fight, although most would rather he wouldn’t. Ralph couldn’t shoot a short gun worth a damn!

  Big Rock and the area surrounding it was filled with men and women who would fight for their families, their homes, and their lands.

  The dozen or so outlaws who rode into town with the thought of taking over and having their way with the women some months back soon found that they had made a horrible and deadly mistake. At least half of them died in their saddles, their guns in their hands. Two more were shot down in the street. Two died in the town’s small clinic. The rest were hanged.