Justice of the Mountain Man Read online

  Pearlie nodded. “That’ll do.”

  “You got the boys ready for the spring calving and branding?” Smoke asked.

  “Yep. An’ the foreman over at Johnny North’s has said he’ll keep a close watch on the place while we’re gone and be sure and help if Miss Sally needs anything.”

  Smoke flipped his butt over the railing into the dirt. “Good, then it’s settled. We’ll take the buckboard into town in the morning so Sally can get some last-minute shopping done, and then we’ll take off.”

  Pearlie’s nose twitched. “You boys smell anything?” he asked.

  Smoke sniffed the air and grinned. “Why I do believe that first batch of bear sign smells like it’s about ready.”

  Cal jumped to his feet and started toward the kitchen, but Pearlie grabbed the back of his belt and jerked him back down. “Don’t you know better’n to try an’ eat ’fore your betters, boy?” he asked as he sprinted toward the cabin door.

  “Take it easy, Cal,” Smoke said as he got slowly to his feet. “There’ll be plenty to go around.”

  Cal’s face fell. “Not if ’n Pearlie gets there first. That boy can eat his weight in bear sign!”

  2

  The next morning Smoke, along with Sally and Cal and Pearlie, loaded up the buckboard and headed for Big Rock. Smoke and Sally rode up top, with Cal and Pearlie and their luggage in the back of the wagon.

  As they entered the town, Sheriff Monte Carson was standing in the door to his office, drinking coffee from a tin cup and puffing on his battered corncob pipe.

  Smoke slowed the buckboard and pulled it to the side of the street in front of Monte’s office. After he helped Sally down, she said she would be in Ed and Peg Jackson’s general store, picking out the provisions she would need while the men were away on their trip to Texas. She gave a small smile. “Why don’t you boys go on over to Longmont’s and tell your friends good-bye while I’m shopping, Smoke?”

  After she left, Monte gave her an approving look. “You got a good woman there, Smoke. One who knows when to step back an’ let her man be with his friends.”

  Smoke nodded. “I know it, Monte. And I’d appreciate it if you and Mary could drop in on her every once in a while when I’m out of town.”

  “No problem, Smoke,” the sheriff answered.

  Pearlie shuffled his feet impatiently. “We gonna go on over to Longmont’s, Smoke?” he asked.

  Monte cocked an eye at Smoke’s foreman. “You must be ’bout starved, Pearlie, since you probably ain’t had nothin’ to eat since you left the Sugarloaf this mornin’.”

  Pearlie rubbed his stomach. “Well, now that you mention it, Monte, I could use a bite or two.”

  “Damn, Pearlie, it ain’t been more’n two hours since you ate last,” Cal said as the men walked toward Longmont’s Saloon down the street.

  Pearlie put his arm over Cal’s shoulder, speaking in a fatherly tone even though he wasn’t more than a couple of years older than the boy. “Cal, like I done tole you, ya’ gotta eat ever’ chance ya get, ’cause you never know when the next opportunity for grub is gonna present itself.”

  Smoke led the way through the batwings of Louis Longmont’s saloon and, as was his habit from years of having men on his trail, immediately stepped to the side of the door and waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom of the room before he walked further.

  Louis Longmont was, as usual, sitting at his private table in a corner of the saloon, drinking coffee laced with chicory and smoking a long, black cigar.

  When he saw Smoke and the others, he grinned and waved them over, calling out to a young, black waiter to come to the table.

  After the men sat down, Louis glanced at the waiter. “Johnny, I’m sure these men have all had breakfast already, but that lanky one there on the end has never been known to take a seat in this establishment without ordering some nourishment.”

  Smoke grinned. “You’re right, Louis. We’ll all have some of Andre’s wonderful coffee, but I’m sure Pearlie will want something extra.”

  “Just a light snack, to get me through till the train leaves, Louis. How about some flapjacks with blueberry syrup and half a pound of bacon on the side?”

  “I see that you’re moving very well, Pearlie,” Louis said. “I guess that wound you suffered during our excitement last month has healed properly.”

  Pearlie fingered his flank, where a bullet meant for Cal had punched through his side just under the skin when he’d pushed Cal out of the way.3

  He made a face, as though in pain. “Well, it still smarts a mite if ’n I move wrong, but I guess the discomfort was worth it to save Cal’s hide.”

  “I swear to God,” Cal said, an aggrieved expression on his face. “It wern’t more’n a scratch, Pearlie. Hell, Doc Spalding didn’t even put a bandage on it!”

  The men at the table all laughed as Pearlie assumed an aggrieved expression. “I guess that’s the thanks I get for savin’ the boy’s life,” he moaned.

  The waiter appeared and began unloading coffee for everyone and a plate piled high with pancakes and bacon, and Pearlie’s face lightened as he grabbed a fork and dug in with apparent gusto.

  Monte fired up his pipe and leaned back in his chair, looking at Smoke. “I see you got your bags packed in the back of the buckboard, Smoke. You boys plannin’ on takin’ a trip?”

  Smoke explained to him how they were going to go down to Texas and talk to Richard King about buying some of his prize Santa Gertrudis bulls to cross with his shorthorn herd.

  “Well,” Monte said, glancing out the window, “spring’s a good time to travel to Texas, ’fore the sun gets hot enough to melt your pistols.”

  Louis arched an eyebrow. “Richard King? Seems I’ve heard the name before.”

  Smoke laughed. “You should have, Louis. King was a steamboat operator who became a serious breeder of cattle. He took the native longhorn cows and bred them with expensive blooded bulls to form a breed called the Santa Gertrudis. He bought seventy-five thousand acres down in Nueces County in Texas, just up from the Rio Bravo. He calls his place the King Ranch, and word is it now covers almost a million acres scattered over four counties.”

  “Whew,” Monte said, tipping his hat back, “and I thought we had some large spreads here in Colorado.”

  “He ships most of his beef and hides out of Galveston on steamboats and sailing ships, but he’s agreed to sell me some of his bulls so his stock won’t get too inbred,” Smoke said.

  As Pearlie finished his meal, the men settled into a comfortable discussion of cattle, ranching, and local gossip. As they talked, Smoke thought how lucky he was to have friends like Monte and Louis . . .

  * * *

  He and Monte Carson had become very good friends over the past few years. Carson had once been a well-known gunfighter, though he had never ridden the owl-hoot trail.

  A local rancher, with plans to take over the county, had hired Carson to be the sheriff of Fontana, a town just down the road from Smoke’s Sugarloaf spread. Carson went along with the man’s plans for a while, till he couldn’t stomach the rapings and killings any longer. He put his foot down and let it be known that Fontana was going to be run in a law-abiding manner from then on.

  The rancher, Tilden Franklin, sent a bunch of riders in to teach the upstart sheriff a lesson. The men killed Carson’s two deputies and seriously wounded him, taking over the town. In retaliation, Smoke founded the town of Big Rock, and he and his band of aging gunfighters cleaned house in Fontana.

  When the fracas was over, Smoke offered the job of sheriff of Big Rock to Monte Carson. He married a grass widow and settled into the job like he was born to it. Neither Smoke nor the citizens of Big Rock ever had cause to regret his taking the job.

  Louis Longmont, on the other hand, owned the saloon in Big Rock called simply Longmont’s, and was Smoke’s friend of many years. Longmont’s was where he plied his trade, which he called teaching amateurs the laws of chance.

  Louis was a lean, h
awk-faced man, with strong, slender hands and long fingers, nails carefully manicured, hands clean. He had jet-black hair and a black pencil-thin mustache. He was, as usual, dressed in a black suit, with white shirt and dark ascot—something he’d picked up on a trip to England some years back. He wore low-heeled boots, and a pistol hung in tied-down leather on his right side. It was not for show, for Louis was snake-quick with a short gun and was a feared, deadly gun hand when pushed.

  Louis was not an evil man. He had never hired his gun out for money. And while he could make a deck of cards do almost anything, he did not cheat at poker. He did not have to cheat. He was possessed of a phenomenal memory and could tell you the odds of filling any type of poker hand, and was one of the first to use the new method of card counting.

  He was just past forty years of age. He had come to the West as a very small boy, with his parents, arriving from Louisiana. His parents had died in a shantytown fire, leaving the boy to cope as best he could.

  He had coped quite well, plying his innate intelligence and willingness to take a chance into a fortune. He owned a large ranch up in Wyoming Territory, several businesses in San Francisco, and a hefty chunk of a railroad.

  Though it was a mystery to many why Longmont stayed with the hard life he had chosen, Smoke thought he understood. Once, Louis had said to him, “Smoke, I would miss my life every bit as much as you would miss the dry-mouthed moment before the draw, the challenge of facing and besting those miscreants who would kill you or others, and the so-called loneliness of the owl-hoot trail.”

  Sometimes Louis joked that he would like to draw against Smoke someday, just to see who was faster. Smoke allowed as how it would be close, but that he would win. “You see, Louis, you’re just too civilized,” he had told him on many occasions. “Your mind is distracted by visions of operas, fine foods and wines, and the odds of your winning the match. Also, your fatal flaw is that you can almost always see the good in the lowest creatures God ever made, and you refuse to believe that anyone is pure evil and without hope of redemption.”

  When Louis laughed at this description of himself, Smoke would continue. “Me, on the other hand, when some snake-scum draws down on me and wants to dance, the only thing I have on my mind is teaching him that when you dance, someone has to pay the band. My mind is clear and focused on only one problem, how to put that stump-sucker across his horse toes-down.”

  While the other men talked, Smoke smiled at his recollections of Louis and Monte, knowing he was going to miss them on his upcoming trip.

  3

  Smoke stood on the train platform, his arms around Sally’s neck. “Good-bye, Sally. I’ll be back before you know it,” he said, staring into her eyes and almost wishing he weren’t going.

  “Smoke,” she began, a serious look on her face.

  “I know,” he interrupted with a grin. “Ride with my guns loose and loaded up six and six.”

  She nodded, not smiling. “I’m serious, Smoke. There’s liable to still be some of those old wanted posters out on you down in Texas. You know how backward those Texicans are.”

  “Yes, dear, I’ll be extra careful, and I’ll make sure Cal and Pearlie watch my back at all times.”

  She glanced over his shoulder to stare fixedly at Cal and Pearlie. “I’m counting on you boys to keep the big man out of trouble, you hear?”

  Pearlie nodded, while Cal looked anxious to get on the train so the adventure could begin.

  “I mean it, Pearlie. There’ll be no more bear sign if anything happens to Smoke!” she warned.

  A look of horror came over his face at the thought. “Don’t you worry none, Miss Sally. He’ll be safe as if he were in church.”

  “That’ll be the day,” she replied with a smile as she hugged Smoke’s neck and brushed his cheek with her lips. “There’ll be more of that waiting for you when you get back,” she whispered in his ear, a mischievous look in her eyes.

  * * *

  As the train pulled through the mountain passes, most still with quite a bit of snow on the ground from the winter snows, Smoke and the boys moved into the smoking car. They sat at a table and Pearlie pulled out a weathered packet of cards.

  “You ready to lose the Sugarloaf, Smoke?” he asked, grinning around a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth as he shuffled the cards in the manner of an experienced poker player as Louis Longmont had shown him.

  Smoke leaned back and pulled a long black cigar from his shirt pocket. “You boys don’t have a chance,” he growled. “Louis loaned me a couple of his poker-playing cigars. No way I can be beat long as I smoke these.”

  Cal’s forehead furrowed. “That ain’t fair, Smoke! You already beat the tar outta us every time we play. You don’t need no special ceegars to hep you do it.”

  Pearlie began to deal the cards. “Shut up, Cal. Cain’t you see he’s just funnin’ with us?”

  They began to play stud poker, using some chips kept on hand in the smoking car for the passengers to use. As the day wore on, the miles passed, and the pile of chips in front of Smoke grew steadily larger, while Cal’s and Pearlie’s shrank slowly.

  A few other men in the car began to gather around, drawn by the lure of a poker game and the evident fun Smoke and the boys were having playing.

  Finally, a man wearing a bowler derby and boiled white shirt stepped over, a thin, short cigarillo hanging from his mouth.

  “Mind if I sit in?” he asked, pulling up a chair without waiting for an answer.

  Smoke pursed his lips. He’d seen men like this hundreds of times in his years on the trail. Tinhorns, they traveled from town to town making a living off suckers who didn’t know the difference between a shaved card and one marked with the sharp edge of a signet ring.

  Pearlie and Cal looked to Smoke to see what he was going to do. He gave them a sly wink and grinned at the stranger. “Sure, have a seat. This is just a friendly game, however. Might not be up to your standards.”

  The tinhorn waved a hand. “Oh, I’m not really much of a poker player, so I’ll fit right in. My name’s Maxwell Gibbons.”

  “I’m Smoke, and this is Cal and Pearlie,” Smoke said, omitting his last name.

  Max pulled a small wad of greenbacks from his coat pocket and put them on the table in front of him. “What’s the game?”

  “Stud poker,” Smoke answered as he shuffled and dealt the cards.

  Without being obvious, Smoke kept his eye on Max as the game progressed, and the stack of chips in front of the newcomer steadily grew.

  He could see Cal and Pearlie becoming more and more frustrated as their money seemed to disappear before their very eyes.

  Soon, Smoke had had enough of Max’s trickery, and he picked up the deck of cards and stared at the gambler. “I want to show you something, tinhorn,” he growled, menace in his voice. Smoke placed the cards on the table and proceeded to cut four aces in a row. Then he picked the cards up, shuffled them, and dealt four hands faceup, giving himself four aces and Pearlie four kings and Cal four queens.

  Max’s eyes widened, then narrowed as his face flushed bright red. “I . . . I don’t understand,” he murmured, his eyes shifting around the car to see if anyone was watching.

  “Oh, I think you do,” Smoke said. He pointed at the signet ring on Max’s hand. “You’ve been shaving the face cards ever since you sat down so they’d be easy to pick out of the deck.”

  Max pushed his chair back, his hand drifting toward his coat. “You calling me a card cheat, mister?” he said, his voice suddenly harsh.

  Smoke leaned back in his chair. “I’ll be calling you dead if that hand moves another inch,” he said, his voice calm and deliberate.

  Max looked in Smoke’s eyes, and his face paled at what he saw there. “Uh . . . just who are you, mister?” he asked, letting his hand drop to his side.

  “My name’s Smoke Jensen.”

  Max gulped. “The Smoke Jensen?”

  “There ain’t but the one, tinhorn,” Pearlie piped up from
across the table.

  “Uh . . . gosh, Mr. Jensen. I’m sorry ’bout all this. I’ll just take my stake and go on about my business,” Max said, reaching for his money.

  Smoke shook his head. “I don’t think so, Max. Just leave it and don’t let me see your face again until we get to Texas.” He leaned forward toward the gambler. “If I do, I’ll be forced to kill you.”

  “But . . . but where’ll I go? The train isn’t all that big,” Max protested.

  Smoke shrugged. “That’s up to you, Max. You could always get off at the next station.”

  “But that’s in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Your choice, tinhorn. Get off and wait for the next train, or take a bullet. Makes no difference to me either way,” Smoke said as he gathered up the pile of money and chips and handed them to Cal and Pearlie.

  “Damn!” Max muttered as he grabbed his hat and stalked out of the car toward the front of the train. He stopped in the doorway and looked back at the table. “I’ll get you for this, Jensen, just you wait.”

  Smoke didn’t answer, but let his hand fall to the butt of his pistol, and Max hastily departed from sight.

  “Golly, Smoke,” Cal said as he counted the money in front of him. “How’d you know he was cheatin’?”

  Smoke grinned. “I’ve played poker in too many saloons and with too many really good card sharks over the years not to recognize the type, Cal.”

  “Then, why’d you let him sit in with us?” Pearlie asked as he built himself a cigarette.

  “I figured you boys needed a lesson in the realities of life on the trail. Louis Longmont once told me, Smoke, someday a man’s going to come up to you and tell you he can make a jack jump up out of a deck of cards and spit in your eye, and you’re going to be tempted to bet against him. Don’t, he said, because sure as I’m sitting here, you are going to wind up with spit in your eye and an empty bankroll.”

  Cal and Pearlie laughed out loud. “That sounds like Louis,” Cal said. “He has a way with words.”

  “And it’s the truth,” Smoke said. “Remember, a man’s not going to ask you to take a bet he can’t win, so the best thing to do is not bet with strangers.”